CIHM 
Microfiche 
Series 
(l^onographs) 


ICMH 

Collection  de 
microfiches 
(monographies) 


CMMdiir,  InstituM  (or  Hittorical  MIcrortproductiont  /  Institut  Canadian  da  microraproductiont  Mttoriquaa 


1996 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes  /  Notes  technique  et  bibliographiques 


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may  be  bibiiographically  unique,  which  may  alter  any  of 
the  images  in  the  reproduction,  or  which  may 
significantly  change  the  usual  method  of  filming  are 
checl<ed  below. 


D 
D 
D 
□ 

n 

D 
D 
D 
D 
D 

D 


D 


Coloured  covers  / 
Couveiture  de  couleur 

Covers  darriaged  / 
Couverture  endommagte 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated  / 
Couverture  restaur^  et/ou  pellicula 

Cover  title  missing  /  Le  litre  de  couverture  manque 

Coloured  maps  /  Cartes  g^raphiques  en  couleur 

Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)  / 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 

Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations  / 
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Bound  with  other  material  / 
Relie  avec  d'autres  documents 

Only  editk}n  available  / 
Seule  Mition  disponible 

Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
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la  marge  interieure. 

Blank  leaves  added  during  restorations  may  appear 
within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these  have 
been  omitled  from  filming  /  II  se  peut  que  ceitaines 
pages  blanches  ajouttes  lors  d'une  restauration 
apparaissent  dans  le  texte,  mais,  knsque  cela  etait 
passible,  ces  pages  n'ont  pas  §te  filmdes. 


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feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure,  etc.,  ont  ete  filmees 
a  nouveau  de  fa9on  a  oLtenir  la  mellleure 
image  passible. 

I  I  Opposing  pages  with  varying  colouration  or 
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best  possible  image  /  Les  pages  s'opposant 
ayant  des  colorations  variables  ou  des  dteol- 
oralions  sont  filmies  deux  fois  afin  d'obtenir  la 
meilleur  Image  possible. 


This! 
Cido 

tox 

mnis 
cuimi 

filmi 
nttsi 

d»t 
filmt 

htrM 
•u  ta 

14  X 

»  dt  radiKtion  indiqu«  cHltuaus 
HX 

22X 

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16X 

20.x 

24  X 

2SX 

■     ' 

32X 

Th«  copy  fMmad  htr*  hat  baan  raproduead  thanks 
to  tha  sanaroiity  of: 

Stauffer  Library 
ii*s  University 


Tha  imtgat  appaaring  hara  ara  tha  batt  quality 
pouibla  eontidaring  tha  condition  and  lagibiiity 
of  tha  originai  copy  and  In  liaoping  with  tha 
filming  contract  apaclficationa. 


L'axampiaira  fiimi  fut  raproduit  grica  t  la 
gtntrotit*  da: 

Stjuffar  Library 
Quean's  University 

Lai  imagat  tuivanta*  ont  at*  raproduitai  avac  la 
plua  grand  loin,  eompta  tanu  da  la  condition  at 
da  la  nanata  da  I'axamplaira  fllma.  at  an 
conf  ormit*  avac  laa  conditioni  du  contrat  da 
filmaga. 


Original  copiai  in  printad  papar  covari  ara  fllmad 
baginning  with  tha  front  covar  and  anding  on 
tha  lait  paga  with  a  printad  or  illuatratad  impraa- 
•ion.  or  tha  back  covar  whan  appropriata.  All 
othar  original  copiai  ara  tilmad  baginning  on  tha 
firit  paga  with  •  printad  or  Illuatratad  impraa- 
lion,  and  anding  on  tha  iaat  paga  with  a  printad 
or  illuatratad  imprasaion. 


Tha  Iaat  racordad  frama  on  aach  microficha 
•hall  contain  tha  symbol  ^•^  (maaning  "CON- 
TINUED"!, or  tha  symbol  V  (maaning  "END"), 
whichavar  appiiai. 

Mapi.  platai.  charts,  ate,  may  ba  filmad  at 
diffarant  raduction  ratios.  Thosa  too  larga  to  ba 
antiraly  inciudad  in  ona  axpoiura  ara  filmad 
baginning  in  tha  uppar  laft  hand  cornar.  laft  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  framas  as 
raquirad.  Tha  following  diagrams  lllustrata  tha 
mathod: 


Las  asamplairaa  originaux  dont  la  couvarturs  an 
papiar  ast  imprimta  sont  fiimas  an  commsncsnt 
par  la  pramiar  plat  at  an  tarminant  soit  par  la 
darniira  paga  qui  comporta  una  emprainta 
d'Imprassion  ou  d'illustrstion.  soit  par  la  second 
plat,  salon  la  cas.  Tous  las  autras  aaampiairas 
originaux  sont  filmts  an  commancant  par  la 
pramWra  paga  qui  comporta  una  amprainta 
d'impraasion  ou  d'illustration  at  an  tarminant  par 
la  darniira  paga  qui  comporta  una  taila 
amprainta. 

Un  daa  symbolai  luivanti  spparaitra  lur  la 
darnitra  imaga  da  ehaqua  microfiche,  salon  la 
cai:  la  lymbola  — *-  lignifia    A  SUIVRE".  la 
lymbola  V  lignifia  "FIN". 

Lai  cartel,  planchai.  tableaux,  etc..  pauvent  itre 
film*!  t  del  taux  da  reduction  difftrenis. 
Lorsqua  la  document  est  trop  grand  pour  itre 
raproduit  en  un  saul  clicht,  il  est  film*  t  partir 
da  I'angia  suptriaur  gauche,  de  gauche  i  droits. 
et  da  haut  an  bas.  an  pranant  la  nombre 
d'imagas  nteessaira.  Las  diagrammas  suivants 
illuatrant  la  mathoda. 


1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

MtCROCOfY   RfSOlUTION    TEST   CHART 

(ANSI  ond  ISO  TEST  CHART  No.  2) 


A  /APPLIED  ItvHGE    In 

^^  1653  East   Main   Street 

5>,iS  Rochest«r,   New  York         U609       USA 

''SS  (716)   482  -  0300  -  Phone 

^S  (^1^)   288  -  5989  -  Fox 


!Ej0aag0  tin  ^iIatl;oltr  ^\tt 


BY 

THOMAS  O'HAGAN 

M.A..  Ph.D.,  Ult.  O.  (Unl) 


Member  of  the  American  Catholic  Historical  Society,  The 
Irish-American  Historical  Society,  The  Catholic  Scientific 
Congress  of  Europe,  The  Irish  Text  Society  of  Lon- 
don (England) ,  The  Celtic  Society  of  Montreal 
(Canada),  and  Honorary  Member  of  the 
/lUiance  Francaise  of  Detroit  (Mich.) 


JOHN  MURPHY  COMPANY 

PUBUSBEKS 
200  W.  LOMBABD  ST.  BALTIMORE,  MD. 


}2 


(  jlco 


CorYRIGHT  191'  BY 

THOMAS    O'HAGAN 


PRESS  OF  JOHN  MURPHY  COMPANY.  Baltimori 


To  the 

RIGHT  REVEREND  THOMAS  J.  SHAHAN 
S.  T.  D.,  J.  U.  L. 

Bishop  of  Germanicopolis 

and 

Rector  of  The  Catholic  Univereity 

Washington,  D.  C. 


48000 


WORKS  BY  THE  SAME  ADTHOK 

Studies  in  Poetry 

Canadian  Essays     r^,-*-. 

Essays:  Literary, ileriiit  and  Historical 

Ciiats  by  the  Fireside 

In  the  Heart  of  the  Mer.dow 

Songs  ol  Heroic  Days 


I 


PREFACE 


I 


i 


Of  the  ten  essays  in  this  volume,  seven 
have  already  appeared  in  various  Catho- 
lic periodicals.     The  opening  paper,  on 
ihe  Influence  of  Religious HomeTrain- 
ing,"  was  read  at  the  International  Eu- 
charistic  Congress  held  in  Montreal,  Can- 
ada,  September,   1910.     The  papers  on 
The  Relation  of  the  Catholic  Journal  to 
Catholic  Literature,"  and  "The  Relation 
of  the  Catholic  School  to  Catholic  Liter- 
ature," were  read,  respectively,   at  the 
Catholic  Press  Convention  at  Columbus 
Ohio,  August,  191 1,  and  the  Americaii 
Catholic  Educational  Convention  held  at 
Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  July,  191 2.    Of  the  re- 
maining seven  papers,  "The  Office  and 
Function  of  Poetry,"  "The  Irish  Dra- 
matic Movement"  and  "Catholic  Intel- 
lectual Activities,"  first  appeared  in  the 
Magnificat.     "Catholic  Journalists  and 
Journalism"  and  "A  Week  in   Rome" 


were  written  for  the  Rosary  Magazine; 
"What  Is  Criticism?"  for  The  Colum- 
biad,  and  the  "Catholic  Element  in  Eng- 
lish Poetry,"  for  the  American  Catholic 
Quarterly  Review,  and  the  courtesy  of  the 
publishers  of  these  periodicals  for  per- 
mission to  reprint  in  book  form  the  seven 
essays  is  hereby  gratefully  acknowledged. 
It  might  be  well  to  add  that  the  paper  on 
"A  Week  in  Rome"  was  written  in  1902, 
while  Pope  Leo  the  Thirteenth,  of  bles- 
sed memory,  was  yet  gloriously  reigning. 
The  ten  essays  bear  the  book  title  of 
"Essays  on  Catholic  Life,"  inasmuch  as 
the  point  of  view  in  every  essay  is  Catho- 
lic and  the  subjects  discussed  in  nearly 
every  instance  are  of  particular  and  vital 
concern  to  Catholics. 

Thomas  O'Hagan. 


May  ist,  1916. 


CONTENTS 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS  HOME         '"" 
TRAINING 

THE  OFFICE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  POETRY. ...  .« 

A  WEEK  IN  ROME j 

THE  IRISH  DRAMATIC  MOVEMENT „ 

CATHOLIC  JOURNALISTS  AND  JOURNALISM.  74 
THE  RELATION  OF  THE  CATHOLIC  JOURNAL 

TO  CATHOLIC  LITERATURE ,« 

WHAT  IS  CRITICISM? ,„, 

THE  RELATION  OF  THE  CATHOLIC  SCHOOL 

TO  CATHOLIC  LITERATURE ,„ 

CATHOLIC  INTELLECTUAL   ACTIVITIES ,35 

THE  CATHOLIC  ELEMENT  IN  ENGLISH  VO- 
ETRY ,,, 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF  RELIGIOUS 
HOME  TRAINING 

[A  Paper  Read  at  the  International  Euchariatic  Congreii, 
Montreal,  September,  1910.] 

The  Church,  the  Home  and  the  School 
—these  are  the  trinity  that  mould  our 
lives,  fashion  our  character  and  fit  us  for 
the  knighthood  of  heaven  and  the  knight- 
hood of  earth.     Each  of  this  trinity  has 
its  great  work  to  do.    The  Church  pours 
upon  the  new-born  the  regenerating  wa- 
ters of  baptism  and  makes  it  a  child  of 
God  and  heir  to  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven; 
the  home  represented  in  the  father  and 
mother  keeps  watch  over  the  seedlings  of 
grace  implanted  at  baptism  in  the  garden 
of  the  infant  heart  and  nourishes  those 
seedlings,  while  the  school  trains  will  and 
heart  and  mind  to  follow  the  precepts  of 
truth  and  hearken  to  the  voice  and  admo- 
nitions of  God. 

Now,  the  nearest  representative  of  God 
in  regard  to  the  child  is  the  Church,  but 


H 


lo      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

the  Church  during  the  first  five  years  of 
the  child  cannot  exert  her  care  directly 
over  It,  so  that  the  life  of  grace  implanted 
through  baptism  must  remain  without 
nourishment  unless  the  parents-unless 
father  and  mother  watching  over  the 
seedlings  of  grace  implanted  by  holy  bap- 
tism in  the  heart  of  the  child,  foster  by 
piety,  precept  and  prayer  the  tender  buds 
of  faith  and  love  that  later  will  bear  beau- 
teous blossoms  in  the  full  summertide  of 
the  garden  of  life. 

Father  Becker,  the  well-known  Jesuit 
writer,  in  his  admirable  work,  "Christian 
Education,"  likens  the  soul  of  a  child 
after  baptism  to  the  bud  of  a  sunflower, 
and  he  asks  what  is  necessary  that  this 
bud  be  developed  to  the  full  splendor  of 
blossom?    Nothing,  Father  Becker  an- 
swers, except  that  parents,  especially  the 
mother,  direct  this  bud  again  and  again 
to  the  light  and  warmth  of  religion     If 
she  does  not  understand  this,  then  the 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


II 


tender  bud,  the  soul,  the  heart  of  the 
child  will  waste  away  and  die. 

It  is,  as  you  all  no  doubt  know,  the  opin- 
ion of  some  of  the  greatest  adepts  in  ped- 
agogics that  as  the  child  is  in  its  sixth  or 
seventh  year,  so  it  will  remain.     Indeed, 
we  have  proof  of  this  before  us  in  the 
lives  of  the  saints.     From  very  tenderest 
childhood  these  holy  men  and  women 
were  directed  by  pious  mothers,  who  in- 
stilled in  their  hearts  a  love  of  prayer,  a 
devotion  to  Jesus  and  Mary,  a  practice  of 
the  sweet  duties  of  religion.    Susanna  and 
Tobias  are  examples  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  in  the  Christian  Era  we  have  a 
St.  Louis,  of  France,  a  St.  Aloysius  and  a 
St.    Stanislaus.     Yes,   assuredly,   as   the 
child  is  in  its  sixth   and  seventh   years, 
through  the  care  of  parents,  so  it  will  re- 
main. 

Is  it  not  true  that  we  hear  today  com- 
plaints on  every  side  of  the  alarming  in- 
crease of  crime  committed  in  early  child- 
hood and  youth,  crimes  of  every  descrip- 


12 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


tion  down  to  dastardly  suicide.  We  boast 
of  our  civilization,  of  our  progress,  of  our 
intellectual  advancement,  but  whence 
comes  this  frightful  increase  in  the  num- 
ber of  juvenile  criminals  ?  Has  the  influ- 
ence of  religious  home  training  ceased? 
Are  our  mothers  ceasing  to  be  mothers? 
Are  the  altars  of  our  homes  adorned  with 
naught  but  Dead  Sea  fruit? 

Philanthropists  who  study  and  note  this 
alarming  increase  of  crime  among  the 
youth  of  our  land  attribute  it  to  a  lack  of 
education  during  early  childhood.    They 
hold  that  greater  pains  should  be  taken 
with  the  education  of  children  while  they 
are  small;  that  more  attention  should  be 
given  to  the  kindergarten  training,  hold- 
ing-and  in  this  they  are  right-that  a 
more  lasting  impression  can  be  made  on 
the  character  of  every  man  before  he  has 
reached  the  sixth  year  of  his  life  than  in 
ail  subsequent  years  together. 

Th    kindergarten  is,  indeed,  very,  very 
good,  provided,  as  Father  Becker  says  it 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      13 

be  pervaded  with  the  light  and  warmth 
of  the  one  true  religion  which  the  Divine 
Lover  of  children  has  instituted.     But, 
after  all,  is  not  the  parental  home  the  best 
kindergarten,  and  is  not  a  pious  mother 
in  this  garden  the  best  gardener?    Who 
will  watch  more  carefully  the  budding 
flower  of  virtue  in  the  heart  of  the  child 
than  the  mother?    Who  Wiil  tend  so  as- 
siduously this  flower,  breathing  into  its 
petals  the  warmth  of  piety  and  faith  and 
nursing  it  with  the  sunshine  of  prayer  as 
the  mother?    Oh,  my  friends,  let  us  not 
be  mistaken.     It  is  from  the  mother  that 
radiates  all  or  well-nigh  all  the  influence 
ot  religious  home  training.     From  the  fa- 
ther the  child,  indeed,  acquires  wisdom 
and  that  strength  of  mind  and  discipline 
of  the  will  which  come  from  ready  and 
cheerful  obedience,  but  it  is  on  the  moth- 
er's lap — in  the  mother's  arms,  that  the 
child  receives  that  moral  impress  which 
fashions  its  life  for  time  and  accompanies 
it  even  into  eternity. 


14      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

No  matter  what  your  priests  may  do, 
say?   the   eloquent   Bishop    Cowgill,    of 
Leeds,  England,  no  matter  how  zealous 
the  sisters  and  the  teachers  may  be,  par- 
ents have  a  duty  to  their  little  ones  which 
no  one  else  can  discharge.    They  must  al- 
ways remain  the  first  teachers  and  instruc- 
tors of  their  offspring.    This  is  the  law  of 
nature,  the  law  of  religion,  the  order  of 
Divine  Providence,  the  will  of  God.  It  is, 
continues  the  Bishop   of   Leeds,  on   the 
mother's  lap  that  the  little  child  should 
learn  to  lisp  its  first  prayer,  to  praise  God, 
its  Maker,  to  bless  God,  its  Saviour,  to 
love  Jesus  of  the  Manger,  Jesus  of  Cal- 
vary, Jesus  of  the  Tabernacle. 

It  is  from  the  father's  lips  it  must  learn 
its  first  lesson  of  wisdom.  These  lessons 
will  never  be  forgotten.  This  primary 
duty  of  parents  is  such  that,  unless  it  be 
observed,  priests  and  nuns  and  teachers 
will  labor  in  vain.  Unless  parents  co- 
operate with  them  it  is  not  possible  to  give 
children  a  proper  training.  What  is  built 


1 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      15 

up  in  school  or  in  Church,  if  not  support- 
ed or  strengthened  by  home  teaching, 
sooner  or  later,  must  fall  to  ruin.  Hence 
the  duty  of  parents  is  to  provide  their 
children  with  a  Christian  home. 

And  now  let  me  ask  what  is  a  Chris- 
tian home?  It  is  a  fortress  built  by  the 
hand  of  God  founded  and  instituted  at 
His  command,  sanctified  by  His  Divine 
love.  It  is,  as  the  good  Bishop  of  Leeds 
says,  a  home  in  which  religion  holds  the 
first  place,  in  which  the  name  of  our  Lord 
is  a  familiar  sound  and  where  the  parents 
govern  themselves  and  rule  their  children 
by  the  principles  of  a  Christian  life.  The 
Christian  home  is  easily  discovered.  The 
very  walls  of  the  house  will  tell  you  at  a 
glance  who  it  is  that  holds  the  first  place 
in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  its  inmates.  If 
on  looking  around  the  eye  rests  on  em- 
blems of  our  holy  faith,  if  you  find  in 
every  room  the  crucifix  or  the  image  of 
Our  Lady,  or  a  religious  picture;  if  you 
see  the  holy  water  stoup  well  replenished. 


'6      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

along  with  other  tokens  of  faith  then  fh. 
^e-y  appearance  of  the  house  wiJUffoJd 
presumptive  evidence  that  Ou r  n 

What  ,s  a  Christian  home?    Is  it  nof 
one  modeled  on  the  Holy  Home  at  nL 

.pmh,.  childhood,  Hi,  boyhSnd  W 
Our  Divine  T  nr^      ,?^        ^'*  wisdom 

"-.«.-et?ti"?tfrj.t^; 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      i; 

children  will  lack  religious  home  train- 
ing, for  your  lives  will,  like  that  of  Mary 
and  Joseph,  be  a  daily  lesson  in  piety  and 
prayer,  and  your  children,  subject  to  you, 
will  grow  through  fond  obedience,  as  did 
Our  Divine  Lord,  in  every  virtue  and 
grace. 

You    remember   that   our  late    Holy 
Father  Pope  Leo  XIII,  of  blessed  mem- 
I    cry,  in  his  Encyclical  on  the  Pious  Asso- 
I    ciation  of  the  Holy  Family,  sets  forth 
j    clearly  how  the  Holy  Family  of  Nazar- 
eth is  a  model  for  evc^y  Christian  family 
of  today.    "In  St.  Joseph,"  says  the  late 
Holy  Pontiff,  "the  iather  of  a  family  has 
a  wondrous  example  of  parental  solici- 
tude and  care;  in  the  Most  Holy  Virgin 
Mother  of  God,  mothers  find  a  perfect 
model  of  love,  of  modesty,  of  resignation 
and  of  perfect  faith ;  and  in  Jesus,  who 
'was  subject  to  them,'  children  have  a  di- 
vine pattern  of  obedience  for  their  admi- 
ration, their  devotion  and  their  imitation. 
Those  who  are  highly  born  will   learn 


1 8      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

from  this  family  of  royal  blood  how  to  be 
modest  in  prosperity  and  dignified  in  ad- 
versity.   Ths  rich  will  be  taught  how  vir- 
tue must  be  preferred  to  riches.    Those 
who  are  engaged  in  labor,  and  all  who, 
especially  in  our  times,  are  so  strongly 
tempted  to  dissatisfaction  and  impatience 
by  straitened  circumstances  and  the  hard- 
ships which  they  and  theirs  have  to  suffer 
need  only  cast  their  eyes  upon  these  holy 
members  of  a  uoly  household,  and  they 
will  find  reasons  rather  for  rejoicing  than 
for  murmuring  at  the  lot  which  has  fallen 
to  them.     Like  the  Holy  Family,  they  la- 
bor; like  the  Holy  Family,  they  have  to 
provide  for  their  daily  bread ;  like  Joseph, 
they  must  live  by  what  they  earn;  and  if 
they  work  with  their  own  hands,  so  also 
did  Jesus  before  them. 

But  let  me  be  clearly  understood  here 
The  very  center  of  the  radiating  influence 
of  religious  home  training  is  the  mother. 
She  is  the  spiritual  sun  of  the  household, 
giving  light  and  warmth  to  its  every  nook 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      19 

and  corner,  filling  with  an  atmosphere  of 
love  and  joy  and  the  eternal  sunshine  of 
heaven. 

But  j'ou  will  ask  who  and  what  is  a 
Christian  mother?    Let  me  answer  you 
in  the  words  of  Rev.  Bertrand  L.  Conway, 
the  Paulist  father:  "A  Christian  mother 
Is  one  who  makes  of  maternity  a  priest- 
hood and  pours  the  faith  of  Christ  into 
the  very  veins  of  her  child  as  she  nurses 
it  at  her  breast.     One  who  teaches  its 
little  hands  to  join  in  prayer  and  its  little 
lips  to  lisp  the  sweet  name  of  Jesus  and 
Mary.     She  is  the  mother  who  knows 
how  to  caress  and  how  to  punish,  how  to 
be  self-sacrificing  and  how  to  resist  her 
child's  whims.     She  is  the  woman  who 
later  on  will  be  glad  to  sacrifice  the  claims 
of  vanity  and  the  desire  for  pleasure  to 
give  her  whole  time  and  attention  to  her 
growing  children;  who  will  prefer  the 
voluntary  .Uavery  of  home  duties  to  the 
capricious  liberty  of  the  world.     Such  a 
mother  will  be  well  able  to  instill  into 


m 


20      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

her  daughter  modesty  and  dcvotedness, 
and  to  teach  her  son  the  manly  virtues  and 
the  noble  passion  of  duty." 

S     h,  my  friends,  is  the  portrait  of  the 
good  Christian  mother  limned  for  us  by 
Father  Conway  in  his  interciiing  work, 
"The  Christian  Family."     Both  Father 
Conway  and  Father  Becker,  it  will  be  ob- 
served, emphasize  for  us  the  work  of  the 
Christian  mother.   Why?    Because,  after 
all,  it  is  to  our  mothers  we  owe  our  chief 
gifts — indeed,  our  whole  happiness,  intel- 
lectual and  moral.     It  is  they  who  create 
the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  home,  fix  its 
decalogue,  tend  the  flame  upon  its  spirit- 
ual altar  and  lead  us  by  the  hand  along 
the  path  which  duty  has  marked  for  our 
footsteps.    There  is  not  one  in  this  hall 
today  that  does  not  realize  in  his  life  the 
influence  of  a  good  mother.     There  is  not 
one  in  this  hall  today  whose  memory  does 
not  reach  back  in  childhood  to  a  good 
mother  perhaps  now  dwelling  with  the 
Saints  of  God.    To  me,  next  to  the  sacra- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


21 


mcnts  of  God's  Church  and  the  teaching 
of  her  divinely  appointed  pastors,  I  owe 
more  to  the  memory  of  a  good  and  pious 
mother  m  keeping  my  stumbling  footsteps 
along  the  path  of  light  and  duty,  than  to 
any  other  influence. 

Through  the  mists  of  years  I  see  now 
this  good  anu  pious  mother  gathering  her 
little  family  around  her  in  her  humble 
abode  in  sweet  converse  with  God  in  even- 
ing prayer.  Hers  was  the  simple  faith  of 
childhood : 

"Not  learned  live  in  gradout  houiehold  wayt. 

Not  perfect,  nay,  but  full  of  tender  v/anti, 

No  angel,  but  a  dearer  being,  all  dipt 

In  angel  initioeti  breathing  Paradiie. 

Interpreter  between  the  gods  and  ™en. 
Who  look'd  all  native  to  her  place  and  yet 
On  tiptoe  ieem'd  to  touch  upon  a  sphere 
Too  groii  to  tread  and  all  male  mind,  perforce 
Sway'd  to  her  from  their  orbitt  ai  they  mov'd 
And  girdled  her  with  music    Happy  he 
With  such  a  mother  I  faith  in  woman  kind 
Beats  with  his  blood  and  trust  in  all  things  high 
Come,  easy  to  him,  and  tho  he  trip  and  fall,      ' 
He  shall  not  blind  his  soul  with  clay." 


;as. 


22      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

I  am  sure,  then,  that  it  is  evident  to 
every  one  of  us  that  in  the  home  the  moth- 
er is  the  very  altar  dispensing  from  tapers 
of  purity,  faith,  devotion  and  truth,  the 
light  which  illumines  each  Christian 
household.  Nay,  her  sweet  soul  is  the  lily 
on  the  altar  symbolizing  the  Lily  Maid  of 
Israel  clad  with  blue  mantle— the  Mother 
of  Our  Divine  Lord. 

If,  then,  we  would  have  religious  home 
influences  safeguarding  the  lives  of  our 
children,  we  must  first  of  all  have  good 
n:others.     You  know  full  well  that  what 
children  see  makes  a  far  deeper  impres- 
sion on  them  than  what  they  hear.    What 
will  it  avail  parents,  I  ask,  if  they  enjoin 
upon  their  children  to  attend  mass  on 
Sundays  and  say  their  morning  and  even- 
ing prayers,  if  they  fail  in  these  duties 
themselves?    There  can  be  no  Christian 
home  unless  parents  practice  what  they 
preach,  for  it  is  the  careful  observance  of 
religious  duties  and  the  constant  remem- 
brance of  God's  presence  that  give  the 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      23 

home  its  Christian  character.  We  arc 
careful  to  guard  them  against  the  germs 
of  disease.  Are  we  careful  to  guard  them 
against  the  germs  of  sin  ?  Are  diseases  of 
of  the  soul  less  dangerous,  less  fatal  than 
diseases  of  the  body?  We  send  our  chil- 
dren to  school  that  they  become  learned  in 
the  wisdom  of  this  world,  but  we  oft  for- 
get to  instruct  them  in  the  wisdom  of  God. 
They  are  rich  in  all  languages  but  the 
language  of  the  soul.  They  shine  with  all 
light  save  the  light  of  God. 

I  feel  certain  that  many  of  the  losses  to 
the  Church  may  be  traced  to  the  lack  of 
religious  home  training.  We  ar^;  not  be- 
reft of  our  faith  in  a  moment.  It  is  usu- 
ally a  process  of  many  years.  The  par- 
ents who  fail  to  discharge  their  duties  to 
their  children  as  practical  Catholics,  who 
do  not  safeguard  their  tender  and  innocent 
souls,  who  do  not  instruct  them  in  our 
holy  faith,  who  yield  to  human  respect 
and  bow  down  before  the  fashions  and 


24      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

lnT^''^\?^  l'^''  "'  '"^•''"g  possible 
and  probable  these  losses  to  our  holy  faith 

Are  we   not,    too,    living  in   an   age 
most  dangerous  to  the  practice  of  Cath- 
olic faith,  and   if   so,  should  we  not  in 
a  special  manner  safeguard  the  little  ones 
in  our  homes,  instruct  them  in  the  truths 
of  Holy  Church,  and,  if  possible,  preserve 
unsullied  their  baptismal  robes.    But  let 
me  repeat  again,  this  is  largely  the  divine 
work  of  the  mother.    The  spiritual  care 
of  the  child  in  the  home  is  assuredly  her 
task  and  blessed  is  that  task  if  she  fulfil  it 
well     In  a  monthly  publication  there  re- 
cently appeared  those  beautiful  words: 
Ihe  child  that  learns  the  Our  Father 
on  the  lap  of  its  mother;  that  learns  from 
the  hpg  of  Its  mother  the  stories  of  the  pa- 
triarchs and  the  lovable  narrations  about 
the  little  Christ-Child,  possesses  a  living 
source  of  religious  faith  in  its  soul  whi^h 
cannot  be  wholly  effaced,  neither  by  the 
^orching  sun  nor  by  the  storms  of  life 
The  profound  and  sweet  impressions  in- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


stilled  by  a  mother  remain  still  fresh  and 
green  when  every  other  recollection  with- 
ers and  dries  up ;  yet  the  death  agony  it- 
self cannot  destroy  them." 

Our  convents  are  doing  a  great  work  to 
fashion  Christian  women  to  tend  the  altar 
of  home,  but  our  convents  cannot  do  every- 
thing. The  tyrannical  exactions  of  socie- 
ty and  the  false  ideals  of  home,  which  so 
largely  obtain  today,  well-nigh  nullify 
the  counsels  and  precepts  of  the  good  re- 
ligious in  our  convents,  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, the  influence  of  religious  home 
training  is  often  a  negligible  quantity  in 
many  of  the  Catholic  homes  of  our  land. 
The  fires  of  faith  are  allowed  to  arn 
down  and  young  children  whose  hearts 
should  be  nourished  with  the  glow  and 
ardor  of  piety  and  devotion,  grow  up  in- 
different, careless,  and  even  wicked.  Fur- 
thermore, my  good  friends,  is  not  the 
habit  or  custom  of  family  prayer  going 
out?  How  many  Catholic  families  are 
there  who  never  gather  at  eventide  to  re- 


26 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


"irenoffaith.    We  h  ve  lo.^?.*"  *'" 
Vision  „,  childhood.    T™,!  o'odT' 

for  the  simple  faith  of  childhood : 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


27 


Heart!  oft  bow  before  itrange  idoli 

Strength  of  life  and  breath  of  fame, 
And,  forgetful  of  life's  morning, 

Dream  of  noontide's  gilded  name; 
But  the  idol  that  I  cherish 

Knows  no  glory  e'en  in  part, 
Tis  the  simple  faith  of  childhood 

Long  grown  strong  within  my  heart. 

In  the  darkest  hour  of  sorrow. 

When  each  star  has  veiled  it  face, 
Turn  I  fondly  to  my  idol. 

Full  of  heavenly  light  and  grace; 
Then  my  step  grows  firm  and  steady, 

Down  the  mystic  path  of  night; 
For  the  simple  faith  of  childhood 

Guides  me,  leads  me  ever  right. 

This  is  the  faith,  my  friends,  that  over- 
cometh  the  world.  It  is  the  faith  that  has 
brought  this  magnificent  Congress  to  our 
city.  It  is  the  faith  which  makes  of  each 
Christian  home  a  treasury  of  grace.  It  is 
the  faith  which  links  heaven  and  earth  in 
the  sacrament  of  the  altar  where  Christ, 
Our  Divine  Lord,  is  tabernacled  as  our 
Guest,  inviting,  entreating  the  fathers  and 
mothers  and  children  to  share  in  His  Di- 
vine Banquet  of  Love. 


Mm 


28 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


THE  OFFICE  AND  FUNCTION  OF 
POETRY 

fJ""^?  "  '^""^'^  '"™  that  poetry  has 
and  function  have   ceased  to  be  under 
stood  by  the  people.  No  longer  does '4  s' 
ttTe^r^.^  ""^'  ^'^^  'olden  Lr  0 

voura?itf:Lri;e?'r^'"^^^ 

niir  A         "*  *"ar-    Men  and  women  of 
our  day  worship  at  other  shrines  where 
burn  dimmer  but  more  alluring  trpers 
Not  only  has  the  breath  of  joy^left  o"r 
meadows  and  the  subsoil  of  pUe  been 
turned  up  and  sown  with   the  Led  of 
science  and  harrowed  into  .harp  ridLs  of 
every-day  facts,  but  the  great  tempTe  of 
song  wi,h  i,  glorious  symbolic  w'ntw 
and  Its  crowning  turrets,  its  altars  of  truTh 
and  light  Its  carved  niches  of  grace  "ts 
figures  and  forms  of  heaven  spfaS  to 
the  heart  of  each  devotee,  stands  sill^f  by 
the  wayside  with  scarce  a  pilgrim  , I 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      29 


its  door  or  a  worshiper  bowed  before  its 
altar  lamps.  The  poet  has,  indeed,  fallen 
upon  barren  times. 

Yet  this  is  all  but  a  phase  of  civiliza- 
tion, or  rather  a  psychological  index  of 
the  attitude  of  the  world  of  today  towards 
the  idealism  of  the  soul.  We  are  living  in 
an  eminently  material  and  practical  age. 
The  dreams  of  the  artist  have  given  way 
before  the  imperious  sweep  of  science  and 
invention ;  genius  in  our  day  is  more  con- 
cerned with  the  conquest  of  the  air  and 
the  subjugation  of  land  and  sea  and  all 
material  forces  to  the  will  and  purpose  of 
man,  than  in  bodying  forth  in  lofty  rhyme 
or  glorifying  on  canvas  or  in  Carrara 
marble  "the  light  that  never  was  on  sea 
or  land" — that  vision  which  comes  to  the 
soul  in  moments  of  inspiration  as  the  gift 
and  dower  of  God. 

Still  the  old  gray  earth  is  not  wholly 
without  dreamers.  From  time  to  time 
great  souls  arise  to  bear  aloft  the  torch 
and  light  up  the  avenues  of  life  and  labor. 


30      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

nobler  vistas      Tu  •      .        P^*""   ^nd 
4  Sw^r"^''"  °'  civi,i^a,i„„,  for 

■°o*ar^e,r  *rb„?;f'•'"«°■'"• 
'o  Whom  have  bentvrd  ^"™  "' 

"c  snail  not  look  down  toward  n 
™pataofspiri,„aId™rw„rMrSir 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      31 


in  earthly  allurement;  otherwise  the 
greatest  of  gifts  may  prove  but  a  curse  to 
mankind.  The  mission  of  the  poet  is  the 
ennoblement  of  the  soul  through  its  dower 
of  faculties;  the  mission  of  God's  priest  at 
the  altar  is  salvation  through  the  gift  of 
divine  grace. 

Now  as  all  art  eludes  definition,  seeing 
that  in  the  last  analysis  a  definition  is  a 
thing  of  logic,  poetry,  in  many  respects 
the  greatest  of  all  the  arts,  evades,  too, 
any  defining  term.  Matthew  Arnold,  if 
I  remember  correctly,  defines  poetry  as 
the  happiest  thoughts  of  the  happiest  mo- 
ments. Yet  it  is  much  more  than  this. 
Wordsworth  defined  it  as  "the  breath  and 
finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge  and  the  im- 
passioned expression  which  is  in  the  coun- 
tenance of  all  science."  But  it  is,  too, 
much  more  than  this.  It  is  life  keyed  to 
the  finest  and  most  subtle  whisperings  of 
the  soul,  full  of  vision,  full  of  imagina- 
tion, full  of  fire,  yes,  fire  from  the  altar 
of  true  inspiration,  borne  by  thurifers  of 


3'      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 
God  who  ,„  J  „5_  ,. 

r=«  lemplt  of ,«,       """  O"^  '"  'he 

•»l=ad„.oJ*i'*?hr'' ''"'"'■'''« 
.™ch.d„or„.,!^,lf^'---i.h" 

Js  no  step  uDwarH  no  ♦     ='^"^«a.     i  here 
breathe  line  air  »„H  ■    "^      .*'  ='"''  ""'' 

thing  of  the  io«,  „i,ich  ,  „  ?  ""=" 
-'  lower  i^  '^,X  The"n  God'"  "!? 
-P-e.e,he,p,e„d.-3'vislro°ht.:,;i; 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      33 

and  His  Divine  love,  which  now  perme- 
ates all  things,  will  then  blossom  and  flame 
as  a  golden  rose  in  the  eternal  kingdom. 
For  ifr..-nortality  reaches  through  all  great 
art,  and  the  song  of  the  reaper  at  sunset 
amid  the  golden  sheaves  has  in  it  a  note  of 
as  permanent  value,  and  smites  the  ear 
of  Heaven  with  a  like  joy  and  harmony 
as  does  that  of  the  lark  as  he  pours  out 
in  mid  air  his  molten,  liquid  notes. 

Yes,  truly,  poetry  is  one  of  the  greatest 
of  the  arts— in  its  capacity,  as  Hamilton 
Mabie  says,  to  receive,  express  and  convey 
thought,  emotion  and  experience.  It  is  not 
solely  dependent  upon  the  intellectual  in 
man,  but  resides  more  largely  in  the  emo- 
tions.    The  drama  has  its  root  and  being 
in  action,  the  epic  in  recital,  and  the  lyric 
in  feeling.     A  poem  to  have  any  artistic 
value  must  be  a  unit,  whether  it  deals  with 
a  deep  emotion,  a  world-event  or  the  ob- 
jective presentation  of  life  in  action. 

Now  there  is   an   approach  to  every 
poem  of  supreme  value  to  t' ,•  interpreter. 


:m' 


34     Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

For  art  is  not  haphazard  in  its  develop- 
mcnt,  but  follows  both  a  norm  and  a  plan. 
It  does  not  develop  by  tangents,  but  grows 
from  the  center  outwards.  In  this  it  fol- 
lows  nature,  whose  flower  and  fruitage 
grows  through  the  seasons  as  art  feels  its 
way  and  ripens  through  the  centuries. 

The  primary  purpose  of  art  is  to  min- 
ister to  the  soul  and  crown  life  with  the 
deepest  felicities  of  the  spirit.    The  poet, 
the  painter,  the  sculptor,  the  musician,  is 
neither  of  yesterday  nor  today,  for  he 
holds  the  centuries  as  a  scroll  in  his  hands. 
Where  Phidias  struck  his  chisel  and  Ra- 
phael dreamed  and  Wagner  told  the  mu- 
sic legend  of  Parsifal  in  sacred  notes, 
there  is  neither  time  nor  age,  nor  winter, 
nor  summer.   All  is  youth  and  the  perpe- 
tuity of  youth. 

But  we  must  go  to  the  poets  if  we 
would,  indeed,  understand  what  poetry 
means.  They  have  touched  it ;  they  have 
felt  it ;  they  have  dreamed  it.  They  know 
well  what  is  the  making  of  a  poet— his 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      35 

relation  to  eternal  truth,  his  fealty  as  a 
knight-errant  of  the  race,  his  worship  of 
beauty  in  every  form,  his  rapt  ecstacy  of 
love,  his  unbroken  pursuit  of  the  divine 
gleam.  They  know  by  intuition  and 
dower  of  God's  gifts  what  our  blind  eyes 
cannot  uncover  through  the  most  assidu- 
ous labor.  Listen,  then,  to  Tennyson  as 
he  tells  us  of  the  birth,  mission  and  influ- 
ence of  "The  Poet" : 

The  po«t  in  a  golden  clime  wai  born, 

With  golden  itari  above; 
Dowerd  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  Korn  of  icorn. 

The  love  of  love. 

He  law  thro-  life  and  death,  thro'  good  and  ill, 

He  law  thro'  hii  own  loul. 
The  marvel  of  the  everlaiting  will, 

An  0  Jen  Kroll, 

Before  hirr  lay:  with  echoing  feet  he  threaded 

The  lecretest  wallet  of  fame: 
The  viewless  arrows  of  his  thoughts  were  headed 

And  wing'd  with  flame. 

Like  Indian  reeds  blown  from  his  silver  tongue, 

And  of  so  fierce  a  flight, 
From  Caipe  unto  Caucasus  they  sung, 

Filling  with  light 


36      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

So  many  minds  did  eird  th.;,      ..       . 


^7 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 
""  wisdom"'"'""'"'  •"""  ""  •""'•  "  «=">* 

WISDOM,  a  name  to  shake 
All  evil  dream,  of  power,-a  sacred  ..„.t.. 
And  vphen  she  spake, 

Her  words  did  gather  thunder  as  they  ran 
And  a,  the  lightning  to  the  thunder 

Which  follows  It,  riving  the  spirit  of  man, 
Makmg  earth  wonder. 

So  was  their  meaning  to  her  words.    No  .word 

Of  wrath  her  right  arm  whiri'd, 
But  one  poor  poet's  scroll,  and  with  hi.  word 

She  took  the  world. 

And  Browning,  too,  the  greatest  psy- 
chological poet  of  the  centuries,  draws  for 
us  his  true  poet,"  whom  he  knows  if  oth- 
ers do  not  These  two  great  poets.  Brown- 
ing and  Tennyson,  looked  upon  the  office 
of  poetry  as  sacred-something  akin  to 
worship.     Because  of  this  the  author  of 

!f  «T  xf  '""^  ^^^  ^°°^"  «"d  the  author 
of  In  Memoriam"  waxed  strong  in  the 
gifts  of  Heaven,  even  when  old  age  would 
warrant  that  the  fires  of  inspiration  had 
died  upon  the  hearth.  When  Browning 
gave  to  the  world  his  last  poem,  "Asolan 
do,    he  was  fast  approaching  foursmre 


38      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

years,  while  Tennyson  was  In  his  eighty- 
third  year  when  he  published  his  drama, 
"The  Foresters."  Both  poems  show  no 
lack  of  mental  grip  or  poetic  vision.  Such 
continued  youth  in  genius  is  not  always 
found  among  the  poets.  But  both  Brown- 
ing and  Tennyson  were  poets  of  whole- 
some moral  life  and  living.  Browning 
was  a  strong,  vital,  cheery,  breezy  man, 
while  Tennyson  possessed  a  noble  poise, 
revealing  in  his  life  and  living  the  strong 
virtues  of  an  English  home. 

We  are  always  safe,  then,  in  turning  to 
the  great  poets  if  we  wish  to  learn  what 
is  the  significance  and  worth  of  poetry, 
v/hat  is  its  office  and  function.  How  lit- 
tle, too,  did  the  great  masters  of  poetry 
care  for  the  mere  adulation  or  condem- 
nation of  the  multitude!  As  artists  they 
realized  that  they  were  and  would  be  mis- 
understood. Spiritual  seers  and  teachers 
of  mankind  are  always  misunderstood. 
For  the  world  is  too  busy  with  little  things 
to  hearken  to  the  voice  from  above.  Often 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      39 

"God's  glow-worm"  is  not  seen  of  men. 
The  fisher  on  the  coast  of  ancient  Tyre 
who  fished  up  the  purple-yielding  murex 
remained,  too,  unheeded;  but  soon  the 
value  of  the  murex  stirred  the  traders  of 
the  market,  and  then,  as  Browning  says, 
the  small  dealers  "put  blue  into  their  line" 
and  outbade  each  other  for  popularity, 
and  as  a  result  fared  sumptuously,  while 
he  who  fished  the  murex  up  remained 
unrecognized.  How  well  all  this  is  set 
forth  in  Browning's  "Popularity"  I 

Stand  atill,  true  poet  that  you  are  I 
I  know  you ;  let  me  try  and  draw  you. 

Some  night  you'll  fail  us:  when  afar 
You  rise,  remember  one  man  saw  you, 

Knew  you  and  named  a  star! 

My  star,  God's  glow-worm!    Why  extend 
That  loving  hand  of  His  which  leads  you, 

Yet  locks  you  safe  from  end  to  end 
Of  this  dark  world,  unless  He  needs  you, 

Just  saves  your  light  to  spend? 

His  clenched  hand  shall  unclose  at  last, 

I  know,  and  let  out  all  the  beauty: 
My  poet  holds  the  future  fast. 

Accepts  the  coming  ages'  duty, 
Their  present  for  the  past. 


40      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


That  day  the  earth's  feaBt-maiter'i  brow 
Shall  clear  to  God  the  chalice  raising; 

"Others  give  best  at  first,  but  thou 
Forever  set'st  our  table  praising, 

Keep'st  the  good  wine  till  now  I" 

Meantime,  I'll  draw  you  as  you  stand. 
With  few  or  none  to  watch  and  wonder: 

I'll  say— a  fisher  on  the  sand 
By  Tyre  the  old,  with  ocean-plunder, 

A  netful,  brought  to  land. 

Who  has  not  heard  how  Tyrian  shells 
Enclosed  the  blue,  that  dye  of  dyes 

Whereof  one  drop  worked  miracles, 
And  colored  like  Astarte's  eyes 

Raw  silk  the  merchant  sells? 

And  each  bystander  of  them  all 
Could  criticise  and  quote  tradition 

How  depths  of  blue  sublimed  some  pall— 
To  get  which  pricked  a  king's  ambition; 

Worth  sceptre,  crown  and  ball. 

Yet  there's  the  dye,  in  that  rough  mesh, 
The  sea  has  only  just  o'er-whisperedl 

Live  whelks,  each  lip's  beard  dripping  fresh. 
As  if  they  still  the  water's  lisp  heard 

Through  foam  the  rock-weeds  thresh. 

Enough  to  furnish  Solomon 

Such  hangings  for  his  cedar-house, 

That  when  gold-robed  he  took  the  throne 
In  that  abyss  of  blue,  the  Spouse 

Might  iwear  his  presence  shone 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      41 


Most  like  the  centre-spike  of  gold 
Whijh  burns  deep  in  the  blue-bell's  womb 

What  time,  with  ardors  manifold, 
The  bee  goes  singing  to  her  groom, 

Drunken  and  overbold. 

Mere  conchsl  not  fit  for  warp  or  woof! 

Till  cunning  come  to  pound  and  squeeze 
And  clarify, — refine  to  proof 

The  liquor  filtered  by  degrees. 
While  the  world  stands  aloof. 

And  there's  the  extract,  flasked  and  fine. 

And  priced  and  salable  at  last 
And  Hobbs,  Nobbs,  Stokes  and  Nokes  combine 

To  paint  the  future  from  the  past, 
Put  blue  into  their  line. 

Hobbs  hints  blue — straight  he  turtle  eats: 
Nobbs  prints  blue, — claret  crowns  his  cup: 

Nokes  outdares  Stokes  in  azure  feats, — 
Both  gorge.     Who  fished  the  murex  up  ? 

What  porridge  had  John  Keats? 

Again,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that 
much  of  our  best  poetry  is  expressed  un- 
der the  form  of  a  symbol.  This  is  largely 
the  method  of  art,  and  is  found  embodied 
in  it  under  every  form  of  expression.  Bet- 
ter far,  too,  in  art  is  it  to  suggest  than  ex- 
press.    Art  that  must  be  translated  by  the 


4^      EssAys  ON  Catholic  Life 

y°"wiilWo"tS',fP«"y.and 
sjon  under  the  form  T?     ""'^^  exf)res- 

Comedy  be  if  it  weTr„o.  h  \"'' '  ^'^^"« 
and  aJlegoricaJ?    Qn        ^^'^  symbolical 

^''en,  indeed  [he  anis^^^'^- 
"«  «  great  spiritual  truth  1      ''" '°  ^"'^^ 
Pr«ses  it  under  the  fol    r''''*'^^'=^- 
or  symbol.    For  the  .n^  ^^  '"  "^^^^^^-y 
tfte  star-sown  sky  oUyZ  ^      r""'  '"''^' 
"«^Jy   its   lisping  J 'r  ^*"«Pint- 

^°™of'tsexprefsio„"'"^^^-*^«<^-ine 

created tde?thTfo™'  ?^  '''''  P°«-« 
sonie  of  our  most  sit  ^       '  P'"''°''  ^ut 
Jyrics  that  burn  and  i^'r''''°"P°'='"s, 
''^uls  with  deepest  f.!r''  '"'^  "'^  «"'• 
^^■ght.  are  expres  ej  fn  f"^  '"'  '^^'^"^t 

^''iWealr'adJtid'r^'^y'"''''^- 
y  said,  It  IS  through  the 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      43 

symbol  that  the  artist  te-  rh« 

ethical  truths     will  "  "'  S'""* 

^^«wa,  he  doing,  the  great  god  Pan 
Down  .„  the  reed,  by  the  river? 

Spreading  ruin  and  «:a«ering  ban 
Splashing  and  paddling  with  hJ*     r 

An^S«a.ingthego,df„2X°^^'^« 

With  the  dragon-fly  on  the  river? 
He  tore  out  a  reed,  the  great  god  Pan 
From  the  deep,  cool  bed  of  tLriv"' 
And  the  broken  lilie.  a-dying    ay 
And  the  dragon-fly  had  fled  ata^f 
Ere  he  brought  it  out  of  the  river 

Ti.i  there  wa.  no,       ■        f  *'  P"'"«  ««<• 


44      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


He  cut  it  ihort,  did  the  great  god  Pan, 

(How  tall  it  itood  iii  the  river  I) 
Then  drew  the  pith  lilce  the  heart  of  a  man 
Steadily  from  the  outiide  ring, 
Then  notched  the  poor,  dry,  empty  thing 

In  holes  at  he  late  by  the  river. 

"Thii  ii  the  way,"  laughed  the  great  god  Pan. 

(Laughed  while  he  itae  by  the  river  I) 
"The  only  way  linee  gods  began 
To  make  sweet  music,  they  could  succeed." 
Then  dropping  his  mouth  to  a  hole  in  the  reed. 
He  blew  in  power  by  the  river  I 

Sweet,  sweet,  sweet,  O  Pan, 

Piercing  sweet  by  the  river  I 
Blinding  sweet,  O  great  god  Pan  I 
The  sun  on  the  hill  forgot  to  die. 
And  the  lilies  revived  and  the  dragon-Hy 

Came  back  to  dream  on  the  river. 

Yet  half  a  beast  is  the  great  god  Pan 

To  laugh  as  he  sits  by  the  river, 
Making  a  poet  out  of  a  man. 
The  true  gods  sigh  for  the  cost  and  the  pain— 
For  the  reed  that  grows  never  more  again 

As  a  reed  with  the  reeds  of  the  river. 

Yes,  verily,  the  true  gods  do  sigh  for  the 
cost  and  pain  in  making  a  poet  out  of  a 
man.  He  shall  henceforth  see  all  things 
not  through  a  colored  glass,  darkly,  but 
with  that  inner  eye,  which,  to  the  material 


Essay;,  on  Catholic  Life.      45 

and  gross  is  sealed,  but  which  is  full  of 
vision  to  the  inspired  and  chosen  few. 
His  soul  henceforth  shall  be  in  touch  with 
both  the  lowly  and  Divine,  for  the  func- 
tion and  office  of  poetry  is  to  interpret  un- 
to man  the  glory  of  God  in  the  universe. 


^ 
« 


46      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


A  WEEK  IN  ROME 

No  other  city  in  Europe  holds  such  in- 
terest for  the  tourist  and  scholar  as  Rome 
It  IS  a  city  which  speaJcs  to  the  soul 
through  the  lips  of  well-nigh  three  thou- 
sand years.     Such  a  dramatic  note  runs 
through  its  life.  Theancient  and  the  mod- 
ern world  here  unite.  The  Coliseum, with 
Its  tragic  memories,  salute  .icross  the  cen- 
turies beneath  the  paling  si..rs  of  morn  the 
glorious  dome  that  crowns  the  Mother 
Church  of  Christendom  —  St.  Peter's 
Every  monument  within  the  City  of  the 
Seven  Hills  speaks  eloquently  of  the  past 
and  marks  the  marchof  civilization  Now 
It  is  the  tomb  of  an  emperor,  now  it  is  a 
triumphal  arch,  now  it  -s  the  buried  re- 
mains of  a  church  of  the  fifth  century. 
Ood  s  finger  has  written  across  the  face  of 
the  Eternal  City.    Well  might  Byron 
write:  ^ 

m«  Vn'"!'  *%?°"'"""  «""«  'hall  ..and, 
When  fall,  the  CoIi.eum  Rome  •hall  fall. 
And  when  Rome  fall.—  the  world  I" 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life,      47 

I  remember  well  the  evening  that  I  ar- 
rived in  Roma  Immortalis.    It  was  Sat- 
urday, August  31,  1900.     Sunday  morn- 
ing at  an  early  hour  I  issued  from  my 
room  in  the  Hotel  Laurati,  that  I  might 
hear  my  first  mass  in  the  Eternal  City  and 
get  a  peep  into  the  glories  of  Rome.  There 
is  access  to  every  art  gallery  and  museum 
in  Rome  on  Sundays  without  money  and 
without  price.    You  know,  gentle  reader, 
that  Italy  is  a  land  of  art,  and  Florence 
and  Rome  are  its  centers.  And  the  peoplel 
There  are  no  such  men  and  women  in  the 
world  as  in  Rome.     Modern  Roman  civi- 
lization must,  indeed,  be  refining,  tlse 
how  account  for  the  fact  that  in  no  other 
part  of  the  world  will  you  meet  such 
beautiful  types  of  cultured  men  and  wo- 
men.    Italy  did  more  than  preserve  and 
hand  down  to  the  modern  world  Greek 
and  Roman  culture.     She  fashioned  the 
most  polished  life  of  the  Europe  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  filled  the  courts  and 


48      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

universities  of  foreign  lands  with  diplo- 
mats,  scholars  and  artists. 

What  a  wonderful  city  Florence  must 
have  been  in  the  Middle  Ages-so  demo- 
cratic yet  so  artistocratic!  Just  think  of 
the  fact  that  Florence  produced  a  greater 
number  of  eminent  men,  starred  the  world 
with  more  genius  during  one  century  of 
the  Middle  Ages  than  did  great  metro- 
politan, throbbing  London,  with  its  teem- 
ing multitudes,  in  three  hundred  years 

Italy  was  the  shrine  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  has  retained  its  pilgrimages  to 
the    present    day.     If    Erasmus    visited 
Naples,  Bologna  and  Rome,  and  found 
inspiration  in  the  land  of  Virgil  and 
Dante,  so  did  Germany's  great  but  pan- 
theistic poet,  Goethe,  sojourn  in  this  land 
of  art  and  inspiration.    And  so  this  po- 
etic pilgrimage  has  continued— now  By- 
ron, now  Shelley,  now  Browning-,  finding 
new  themes,  new  thought,  new  fire,  fresh 
desire  in  the  land  whose  shores  are  lapped 
by  the  blue  Mediterranean 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      49 

But  the  greatest  fact  in  the  life  and  his- 
^n^  of  Rome  is  the  Pope.  Here  the 
White  Shepherd  of  mankind  has  worn, 

and    vicissitude 


-  -  mankind  has  worn 

through    every    fortune  „...    ,...„„, 
since  St.  Peter  was  crucified  for  his  M 


as- 


er,  the  tiara.  Rome  is,  indeed,  a  city  of 
far-reachmg  and  linked  memories.  It  was 
great  before  the  Goths,  Huns  and  Van- 
dals swept  down  from  the  North;  it  was 

hlTp      u.l?"'''"'^"^  had  fashioned 
h.s  Frankish  kingdom;  it  was  great  be- 
fore the  Greeks  dreamed  out  their  Em- 
P-re  on  the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus-  it 
was  great  before  Columbus,  standing  at 
the  port  of  Palos,     ,  Sp,;,,  turned  his 
piercing  gaze  tov^.ru    ...  undiscovered 
continent  in  the  West.     It  is  great  todav, 
not  in  commerce,  not  in  the  goodly  gif'ts 
of  earth  not  in  the  work  of  man,  but  in 
he  work  of  God.     The  Apostolic  Mis- 

realized    but   through  the  eye  of  faith 

Not  St.  Peter's,  not  St.  Paul's  without  the 
walls,  not  Santa  Maria  Maggiore,  but  the 


-M- 


50      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

tomb  of  the  Apostles  under  the  altar  of 
St.  Peter's  draws  all  Christian  hearts  to 
Rome.    The  feeble  old  man  who,  leaning 
upon  a  staff,  lights  up  the  gardens  of  the 
Vatican  with  his  benign  smile  and  directs 
with  finger  of  conscience  the  wayward 
nations  must  inevitably  soon   sleep   in 
dull,  cold  marble,"  but  the  "lumen  in 
coelo"  will  not  disappear-i,t  will  but 
blaze  brighter  as  the  higher  and  better 
things  of  the  twentieth  century  enfold  the 
life  of  man. 

A  week  in  Rome  is  a  short  span  of  time 
for  sightseeing.  Yet  to  a  New  World  pil- 
grim It  reveals  much  that  deepens  interest 
m  the  historic  and  artistic  past;  in  life- 
dramas  enacted  when  the  centuries  were 
young;  in  the  dreams  and  aspirations  of 
Roman  genius  rocked  and  nurtured  under 
Italian  skies. 

I  shared  my  attention  while  in  Rome 
with  the  living  and  the  dead,  with  the  past 
and  the  present.  The  archsologist  need 
not  hunger  for  material  in  Rome.  He  has 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      51 

enough  for  a  lifetime  if  that  lifetime  cov- 
ered ten  centuries.    Excavation  always 
goes  on.    It  was  reported  when  I  was 
there  that  the  tomb  of  Romulus  had  been 
found,  but  my  guide,  Augusto  Benincasa, 
after  I  had  broken  a  bottle  of  vino  bianco 
with  him,  assured  me  in  great  confidence 
that  It  was  not  really  the  tomb  of  the  foun- 
der of  the  Roman  Empire.    A  wise  skep- 
ticism is  a  good  thing  to  have  about  you 
in  Rome.     It  will  serve  you  much  better 
than  Wordsworth's  "wise  passiveness."    I 
would  not  say  that  your  Roman  is  dishon- 
est, but  he  is  a  very  clever  casuist.    In- 
deed, it  must  be  said  that  your  Roman  is 
very  enterprising,  and  I  should  not  pause 
to  say  that  if  there  was  any  money  in  it  he 
would  not  hesitate  to  dig  up  the  bones  of 
his  grandfather. 

But  let  me  turn  from  the  ancient  quar- 
ter of  Rome— from  the  Coliseum,  where 
Nero  and  Domitian  disported  themselves 
from  the  columnal  remains  of  the  Forum 
which  was  once  wont  to  echo  with  Latin 


52      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


N-^i- 


oratory  from   Trajan's   column,    which 
marked  the  victory  of  Roman  arms  and 
turn  to  the  glory  of  Italian  art  as  we  find 
It  in  the  Vatican  picture  galleries.    The 
Popes  in  every  age  have  been  the  patrons 
—sometimes  munificent  patrons,  as  in  the 
case  of  Leo  X,  one  of  the  Florentine  Me- 
dicis— of  the  arts  and  sciences.    But  art 
must  have  a  conscience— without  moral 
tone,  aspiration,  infinitude,  art  is  of  the 
earth  earthy.     So  vile,  coarse  photogra- 
phy—sensual veritism  without  idealiza- 
tion, has  never  found  a  home  or  housing 
in  the  Vatican. 

As  is  well  known,  one  of  the  greatest 
painters  of  all  times  is  Raphael.  He  was 
the  culmination  of  the  Christian  school 
of  Italian  painters,  which  was  Byzantine 
HI  its  origin.  To  it  belong  such  well- 
known  names  as  Fra  Angelico,  Perugino 
and  Bartolommeo.  If  you  would  study 
the  work  of  the  great  Florentine  painter, 
Raphael,  go  to  Rome— go  to  the  Vatican' 
Some  of  Raphael's  great  paintings  are 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      53 

"The  Sistine  Madonna,"  "The  Transfig- 
uration," "The  Dispute  Upon  the  Holy 
Sacrament,"   "The  School   of  Athens," 

The  Encounter  of  St.  Leo  the  Great  with 
Att,la/'    All  these  are  in  the  Vatican,  ex 
cept  the  "Sistine  Madonna,"  which  is  in 
the  Dresden  Art  Gallery. 

It  is  worth  noting  here  that  the  artistic 
gemus  of  England  in  painting  tends  to 
hnd  expression  in  water  colors,  the  artis- 
ic  genius  of  France  in  pastel,  and  the  ar- 
tistic gemus  of  Italy  in  fresco.  Leonardo 
da  Vinci  s  great  painting,  "The  Last  Sup- 
per,   IS  fresco  work. 

As  to  the  great  churches  of  Rome,  and 

5T/^"''"*^^"y  ^^^  *='ty  of  churches, 
the  Mother  Church  of  Christendom,  St 
peters,  does  not  impress  you  when  you 
first  visit  it.  You  require  to  study  it  day 
by  day-yes,  I  might  say  week  by  week 
before  its  architectural  greatness  grows 
upon  you  Its  harmony  of  detail  is  so 
marked  that  you  do  not  for  some  time  re- 
ahze  Its  size.    It  will  be  remembered  that 


54      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


its  foundation  stone  was  laid  in  1506  and 
it  reached  its  completion  in  1629. 

But  let  me  here  tum  from  St.  Peter's  to 
the  great  Father  of  Christendom — our 
Holy  Father  Pope  Leo  XIII— and  briefly 
present  him  to  my  readers  as  I  saw  His 
Holiness  in  the  summer  of  1900.  During 
my  stay  in  the  r'^ternal  City  I  learned  that 
the  Holy  Father  was  in  a  few  days  to 
grant  an  audience,  or  perhaps  it  would  be 
more  correct  to  say,  give  his  benediction 
in  St.  Peter's  to  the  thousands  of  pilgrims 
who  were  flocking  into  the  city.  Now  my 
problem  was  to  smuggle  myself  into  St. 
Peter's  as  a  pilgrim,  and  this  I  did  with 
the  assistance  of  my  guide  and  a  very  gen- 
erous "tip."  Here  is  the  ticket  that  ad- 
mitted me,  in  good  Dantean  Italian: 

ANTICAMERA  PONTIFICIA  AL  VATICANO. 

Biglietto   d'ammiisiane   alia   Baailica   Vaticana 

per  ricevere  la  Benedlzione  di  Sua  Santita  nel 

giorno  Giovedi  6  Settembre  1900  alle  ore  11%. 

II  Mntro  di  Camera  di  Sua  Santita, 

Cagiano  de  Azevedo. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      55 


It  is  said  that  forty  thousand  pilgrims 
gathered  in   St.   Peter's   to   receive   the 
Pope's  benediction.    It  was  a  cosmopoli- 
tan crowd,  with,  of  course,  the  Italian— 
the    Sicilian    Italian  predominating.     I 
stood  to  the  right  of  the  railing  which 
surrounds  the  tomb  of  the  Apostles  and 
chatted  in  brief   Italian   sentences  with 
those  around  me  while  awaiting  the  arri- 
val of  the  Holy  Father.     Suddenly  the 
whisper  was  passed  along  the  line,  "Here 
comes  the  Holy  Father,"  and,  borne  in 
his  sedan  above  the  heads  of  the  pilgrims 
by  six  stalwart  Swiss  guards,  the  successor 
of  St.  Peter,  clad  in  white,  wearing  the 
papal  tiara,  passed  up  the  aisle  blessing 
the  huge  multitude  with  uplifted  hand 
and  dispensing  such  a  sweet  and  kindly 
smile  as  could  only  have  found  lodgment 
in  the  great  and  noble  soul  of  the  Vicar 
of  Christ. 

Pope  Leo  XIII  is  one  of  the  great 
Popes  of  a  distinguished  and  illustrious 
line  of  Popes.    His  sovereignty  deals  not 


m 


m; 


56      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

with  earthly  statutes.  He  is,  indeed,  the 
true  father  of  the  faithful— the  central 
fact  of  our  intellectual  and  moral  world. 
For  crowns  may  crumble,  scepters  may 
smash,  thrones  may  tumble,  but  the  suc- 
cessor of  St.  Peter  reigns  in  the  Eternal 
City,  the  Viceregent  of  Christ  and  dispen- 
ser of  His  heavenly  treasures,  gifts  and 
blessings  to  man. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


57 


THE  IRISH  DRAMATIC  MOVE- 
MENT 

What  are  the  conditions  which  give 
rise  to  the  creation  of  a  national  drama? 
Corneille  and  Racine  and  Moliere  appear 
in  France,  and  a  glorious  and  fruitful 
dramatic  era  is  ushered  in;  Lope  de  Vega 
and  Calderon  light  up  the  literary  firma- 
ment of  Spain  and  the  Spanish  theatre  is 
enriched  for  all  time;  Henrik  Ibsen  in 
our  own  day,  by  the  subtle  and  searching 
dramatic  gifts  of  his  soul,  gives  the  Nor 
wegian  theatre  a  place  in  the  great  world 
of  drama— and  we  think  immediately  of 
this  great  Scandinavian,  not,  indeed,  as  a 
Shakespeare,  but  rather  as  a  nineteenth 
century  prober  of  society  whose  dramas 
are  but  so  many  clinic  reports,  rehearsed 
upon  the  stage 

It  must  be  confessed  that  it  is  impossible 
to  explain  the  advent  of  genius.  Shake- 
speare came  after  the  Morality  and  Mys- 


M 


.t/fV 


58      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


IJ 


tcry  Plays  had  lost  their  hold  on  the  Eng- 
lish people  and   the   human   mind  was 
reaching  out  for  conquest  and  discovery. 
His  dramatic  genius,  while  representa- 
tive of  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind,  is  as  uni- 
versal as  humanity.     He    scanned    the 
mountain  tops  of  the  Middle  Ages  and 
caught  the  glow  of  a  new  sun  lighting  up 
their   summits.      As    we    read    Shake- 
speare's plays  we  feel  the  vital  freshness 
of  a  new  dawn.     If  ten  silent  centuries 
speak  through  the  lips  of  Dante,  the  grent 
awakened  mind  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with 
its  prophetic,  scientific  and  humanistic 
heart-throbbings,  finds  fit  utterance  in  the 
dramas  of  Shakespeare.    His  genius  truly 
incarnates  a  new  order  of  things. 

It  is,  perhaps,  too  early  as  yet  to  meas- 
ure the  character  and  worth  of  the  Irish 
dramatic  movement,  which  within  recent 
years  has  attracted  so  much  attention.  But 
we  may  here  indicate  its  purpose  and 
trend  and,  analyzing  it  as  a  reflection  and 
exponent  of  Irish  life  and  character,  state 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      59 

frankly  its  merits  and  limitations,  or  let  us 
rather  say  its  defects. 

It  is  worth  noting  that,  while  the  Irish 
Gaelic  Revival  and  the  Irish  Dramatic 
Movement  are  not  exactly  co-radical,  they 
have  largely  sprung  from  the  same  im- 
pulse and  are  really  the  fruit  of  the  same 
dewy  morn.  And  this  dewy  morn  marks 
a  rebirth  of  the  Irish  soul  which  for  cen- 
turies has  been  prisoned  or  a  wanderer 
among  the  alien  nations  of  the  earth. 

I  know  nothing  so  pathetic  as  a  man 
who  has  lost  his  nationality.  Though 
rich  in  the  goods  of  the  world,  he  is  poor 
indeed,  for  his  very  soul  has  been  stripped 
to  the  bone.  He  is  practically  an  outcast 
among  men,  going  about  apologizing  for 
the  accident  of  his  birth.  Alas!  this  has 
been  the  fate  of  the  Irishman  for  cen- 
turies.   Will  it  continue? 

Let  us  hope  not.  As  a  well-known 
Irish  writer  of  today  says,  "There  is  some- 
thing, be  It  instinct  or  the  living  subcon- 
scious tradition  of  an  almost  dead  civili- 


6o      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

zation,  that  says  to  nearly  every  Irish 
heart,  'Thou  shah  be  Irish :  thou  shalt  not 
be  English.' " 

To  this  end  the  Gaelic  League  of  Ire- 
land, with  its  patriotic  and  gifted  leader, 
Dr.  Douglas  Hyde,  is  laboring,  and  it  has 
already  accomplished  much.  To  this  end, 
too,  have  the  members  of  the  Irish  Dra- 
matic Movement,  Lady  Gregory,  William 
Butler  Yeats,  Lennox  Robinson,  William 
Boyle,  T.  C.  Murray  and  the  late  John 
Millington  Synge  labored.  Whatever  be 
the  defects  of  their  Irish  dramas  as  por- 
trayals of  Irish  life  and  character,  the 
sincerity  of  their  patriotism  cannot  well 
be  questioned. 

Of  course,  we  must  not  forget  that 
Irish  character  has  been  evolved  or  de- 
lineated for  centuries  by  dran  .  tists,  nov- 
elists and  actors.  It  has  been  the  work 
of  the  Elizabethan  playwrights,  Shake- 
speare, Ben  Johnson,  Dekker  and  Ford; 
and  later  of  Smollett,  Sheridan,  Thack- 
eray, Maria  Edgeworth,  George  Mere- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      6i 

dith,  Farquhar,  Lover,  Lever,  Carleton, 
Dion  Boucicault  and  Bernard  Shaw;  and 
the  actors,  Chauncey  Olcott  and  Andrew 
Mack  in  America.     But  much  of  all  this 
has  been  caricature.    Few,  if  any,  of  all 
these  have  touched  the  soul  of  Ireland 
What  is  most  significant  in  Irish  life  has 
been  passed  over.    They  have  known  Ire- 
land, and  represented  her  from  the  out- 
side, but  not  from  the  inside.    They  never 
once  touched  the  hem  of  her  spiritual 
roh.,  and  this  spiritual    robe   has   been 
si'K  i  the  days  of  Saint  Patrick  Ireland's 
evjry-day  garment. 

Let  it  be  said  here,  too,  that  the  Irish 
aramatists  of  today  are  neither  aliens  nor 
visitors  to  Ireland.  They  were  born  and 
bred  on  its  soil,  and  should,  therefore, 
know  Ireland  fromwithin  as  well  as  from' 
without.  Yeats,  Synge  and  Robinson 
passed  their  youth  among  their  fellow- 
countrymen  and  had,  therefore,  every  op- 
portunity of  knowing  the  inner  life  of  the 
Irish  people.    They  were  nursed  amid 


62      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


the  faith  and  traditions  of  the  people. 
There  seems,  however,  to  be  an  Ireland, 
as  Charles  Bewley  points  out  in  the  Dub- 
lin Review  for  January,  1913,  that  these 
playwrights  do  not  know,  an  Ireland 
which  is  not  bounded  by  the  four  seas, 
but  by  history,  religion  and  tradition. 

Now  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  among 
the  Celts,  whether  of  Ireland,  Scotland, 
Wales  or  Brittany,  are  to  be  found  today 
traces  of  Pagan  life  that  existed  before 
their  conversion  to  Christianity.  Of 
course,  these  Pagan  primitive  habits  of 
thought  and  action  will,  to  some  extent, 
be  found  among  the  people  of  all  Euro- 
pean countries.  But  perhaps  these  primi- 
tive habits  have  persisted  stronger  and 
longer  among  the  Celts  than  among  any 
other  people  of  Europe.  You  have  but 
to  visit  Brittany,  in  France,  and  attend 
some  of  the  fetes  of  the  people  to  be  as- 
sured of  this.  The  Celt  holds  so  strongly 
to  the  past  and  is  so  full  of  imagination 
that  superstition  has  ever  a  strong  hold 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      63 


on  his  mind.  He  is  a  creature  of  super- 
naturalism  and  never  a  child  of  the  dull 
earth. 

Fascinated  by  traces  of  this  old  Pagan 
life,  with  its  touches  of  superstition  and 
its  rough  and  passionate  outbursts,  both 
Yeats  and  Synge  have  virtually  built  their 
literary  work  upon  this  ancient  Pagan 
Gseldom  and  labeled  it  Irish  drama.  But 
this  is  no  more  Irish  drama  representing 
Irish  life  and  Irish  character  of  today 
than  would  a  drama  by  Pinero  dealing 
with  the  savage  deeds  of  the  Anglo-Sax- 
ons before  the  coming  among  them  of 
Saint  Augustine  be  representative  of 
English  life  and  English  character  of  to- 
day. Yeats  and  Synge  found,  or  thought 
they  found,  certain  dramatic  stuff 
among  the  peasantry  of  Ireland  and 
forthwith  proceeded  to  build  up  Irish 
dramas  representative  of  Ireland  of  to- 
day. Both  went  to  London  and  Paris  for 
their  ideals  of  drama,  and  then  went  to 
Ireland  to  find  the  elements  of  character 


'-i 


m 


^1k.! 


64      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


and  incidents  upon  which  to  construct 
their  dramas;  and  when  they  could  not 
find  the  characters  they  wanted  they  in- 
vented them.  "The  favorable  compari- 
sons," says  Francis  Bickley  in  his  study 
of  Synge,  "between  Irish  women  and  the 
women  of  England  or  Scotland  in  the 
matter  of  chastity,  was  a  trump  card  in 
the  hands  of  the  Nationalists.  Here  was 
a  writer  who  seemed  to  call  it  in  question. 
Such  a  thing  was  impolitic,  if  no  worse. 
It  goes  without  saying  that  Synge  had  no 
desire  to  lower  his  compatriots  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world.  But  if  he  had  only  found 
one  unchaste  woman  in  the  four  Prov- 
inces and  had  thought  her  the  right  stuff 
for  drama,  he  would  have  dramatized 
her,  or  if  he  had  found  none  he  would 
have  invented  one  had  his  purpose  re- 
quired it." 

Now  the  work  of  the  dramatist  is  to 
represent  life,  idealized  if  you  will,  but 
full  of  truth.  Synge's  purpose  in  build- 
ing up  or   creating   his   Irish   dramas 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      65 

should  be  to  represent  Irish  life,  ideal- 
ized if  you  will  also,  but  full  of  truth. 
How,  I  would  ask  Mr.  Bickley,  can  this 
be  done  if  Synge  departs  so  far  from 
truth  as  to  create  an  unchaste  Irish 
^yoman  in  a  country  where  feminine  chas- 
tity is  supreme,  and  then  hold  such  a  wo- 
man up— represent  her  on  the  stage  as 
typical  of  the  women  of  Ireland? 

Let  us  remember,  too,  that  while  we 
are  permitted  for  dramatic  purposes  both 
to  idealize  and  exaggerate,  the  basis  of 
both  idealization  and  exaggeration  must 
be  truth.     See,  for  instance,  how  admir- 
ably  Shakespeare  observes    this   in   his 
splendid  dramatic  creations.     Nor  would 
Shakespeare,  we  may  well  suppose,  were 
he  to  write   a   drama   representative   of 
Irish  life  today,  leave  out  its  most  impor- 
tant element,  the  element  of  religion.  Let 
us  see  whst  the  greatest  of  all  dramatists 
does  in  this  respect.     He  finds  an  Italian 
tale  telling  of  the  tragedy  of  a  pair  of 
"star-crossed  lovers,"  and  he  builds  up 


66      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


I''  ' 


under  the  fair  skies  of  Verona  a  drama 
truly  representative,  if  idealized,  of  Ital- 
ian life  in  a  mediaeval  city.  Does  he  leave 
out  the  spiritual?  Not  at  all.  The  good 
old  friar  is  most  sympathetically  drawn. 
He  gives  us  a  tragedy  of  the  North,  with 
all  its  coarse  carousal  in  Hamlet,  but  re- 
ligion finds  a  voice,  though  that  voice 
comes  from  the  purging  chambers  of 
Purgatory. 

Unfortunately,  John  Millington  Synge 
lacked  the  spiritual  constitution  of  a  great 
dramatist.  Yet  he  had  many  gifts,  and 
not  the  least  of  these  was  his  excellent 
dramatic  technique.  His  knowledge  of 
Gaelic,  too,  gave  him  that  splendid  com- 
mand of  Irish  dialect  which  fills  his  lines 
with  a  certain  rich  Irish  flavor  and  savor 
not  found  in  the  work  of  any  other  Irish 
dramatist.  Irish  dialect  is  not  a  mouth- 
ing of  e's  and  a's,  as  some  writers  would 
have  us  believe,  but  rather  the  Irish  turn 
of  thought  as  set  forth  in  the  Gaelic  lan- 
guage and  translated  faithfully  into  the 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      67 

English  tongue.  Synge,  too,  was  quick 
to  catch  the  accent  of  the  Irish  heart  in 
its  deepest  and  saddest  tragedies.  His  hu- 
mor at  times  is  as  bewildering  as  that  of 
Cervantes.  He  has  left  the  "Playboy  of 
the  Western  World"  as  an  enigma  to 
mankind.  He  who  would  interpret  the 
significance  of  this  drama  must  needs  en- 
ter the  inner  chamber  of  the  genius  of 
John  Millington  Synge.  To  my  mind, 
while  it  is  well  constructed,  it  is  of  all 
Synge's  plays  the  least  happy  as  a  por- 
trayal of  Irish  character.  There  are 
many  successful  elements  in  it,  but  Synge 
has  put  into  this  creation  too  much  of  the 
improbable  and  fictitious.  Sometimes, 
too,  some  of  its  lines  approach  blasphemy, 
and  this  synthesis  of  irreverence,  to  use  a 
mild  expression,  is  so  marked  a  charac- 
teristic of  the  whole  drama  that  after 
witnessing  its  performance  a  feeling  of 
disgust,  mingled  with  anger,  fills  the 
n:  ind.     In  this  play  Synge,  to  use  his  own 


68      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


term,  "collaborated"  too  well,  using  his 
favorite  elements  too  lavishly. 

One  thing  Synge  often  forgets,  too,  as 
a  playwright,  and  that  is  that  the  abnor- 
mal element  alone  will  not  yield  us  a 
great  drama.  Side  by  side  with  it  we 
must  have  the  normal.  Shakespeare  never 
forgets  this.  There  is  not  a  play  of  the 
great  dramatist  in  which  the  abnormal  is 
not  set  off  by  the  normal.  The  "Play- 
boy of  the  Western  World"  is  a  very  riot- 
ing of  the  abnormal.  How  joy  can  issue 
out  of  it,  though  keyed  as  a  comedy,  I 
cannot  see.  It  is  altogether  too  prepos- 
terously abnormal. 

It  is  easy  to  discern  the  strength  and 
defects  of  Synge  in  his  drama.  Wher- 
ever it  is  a  question  of  the  primitive  pas- 
sions of  the  Celt  and  the  psychology  of 
his  ancient  racial  beliefs  surviving  in 
even  the  slightest  form  in  the  Ireland  of 
today,  Synge  as  a  creator  and  portrayer  is 
strong  and  a  master  of  his  work.  Wit- 
ness for  instance  his  marvelous  one-act 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      69 

tragedy,  "Riders  to  the  Sea."  Here  our 
playwright  is  dealing  with  two  elements 
that  are  entirely,  dramatically  speaking, 
in  harmony  with  his  genius:  the  ruthless 
and  all-devouririg  element  of  the  sea  and 
that  wistful  "second  sight"  of  the  Celt 
which  lies  on  the  borderland  between 
prophecy  and  predestination. 

For  me  this  terrible  tragedy  is  by  far 
the  greatest  thing  that  Synge  has  done, 
nor  do  I  know  of  any  one-act  drama  that 
moves  along  with  :>jch  swiftness  and  in- 
tensity or  fills  the  stage  from  the  very  out- 
set with  such  an  atmosphere  of  impend- 
ing tragedy  as  "Riders  to  the  Sea."  This 
is  surely  Synge's  masterpiece,  and  it  is 
his  masterpiece  because  it  reveals  best 
Synge's  dramatic  grasp  of  the  materials 
and  elements  of  the  tragedy.  But  pray 
notice  how  little  of  the  spiritual  element 
there  is  in  this  tragedy.  Forsooth,  because 
Synge  was  little  concerned  with  the  part 
religion  played  in  the  tragedy.  With  the 
exception  of  a  slight  evidence  of  Chris- 


70      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


'% 


[sill 
'  I 

1  '  ! 


tian  faith,  this  tragedy  might  have  been 
written  when  the  Druid  kings  held  sway 
in  Ireland.  It  is  true  that,  at  the  close, 
Maurya  gives  utterance  to  a  Christian 
resignation  something  higher  than  Pagan 
fatalism.  The  trouble  with  Synge  was 
that  in  his  study  and  portraiture  of  Irish 
character  he  emphasized  certain  qualities 
that  are  either  absent  altogether  in  the 
Iiish  or  are  but  minor  attributes.  In 
every  instance  he  stressed  the  abnormal, 
with  no  thought  of  its  normal  accompani- 
ment. As  a  result  of  this  we  have  savag- 
ery, irreverence  and  blasphemy  and  a 
flouting  of  the  sacrament  of  marriage  as 
characteristic  of  the  Ireland  of  today.  Is 
it  any  wonder,  then,  that  every  self-re- 
specting Irishman  holds  such  a  drama  as 
the  "Playboy  of  the  Western  World"  as  a 
parody  and  perversion  of  Irish  peasant 
life,  a  libel  on  Irish  national  character, 
and  immoral  both  in  language  and  plot? 
Let  us  consider  here  for  a  moment  how 
Synge's  plays  are  viewed  by   impartial 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      71 

scholars  and  critics.  M.  Bourgeois,  of 
Paris,  France,  has  probably  published  the 
best  and  most  exhaustive  study  of  the 
work  of  John  Millington  Synge  yet  given 
out.  Here  is  what  he  says  in  his  "J.  M. 
Synge  and  the  Irish  Theatre,"  touching 
the  un-Irish  character  of  Synge'  plays : 

"A  more  distinctly  un-Irish  element  in 
Synge's  plays  is  his  non-religious  view  of 
life.  Doubtless  that  had  an  artistic  cause: 
the  desire  to  return  to  the  relentless  sav- 
agery of  ancient  Paganism.    But  Synge's 
archaic  quest  of  the  older  Gaelic  civiliza- 
tion made  him  blind  to  the  profounder 
spirit  of  modern  Ireland.     In  a  way  the 
ancient  heathendom  may  be  said  to  sur- 
vive in  the  uncontrollable  temperament 
and  passionate  outbursts  of  the  average 
Irish  peasant  of  today;  but  this  is  only  a 
superficial  appearance;  at  bottom  he  is 
an  ardently  religious  being  whose  whole 
life  is  colored  by  faith  and  belief— espe- 
cially   Catholic    faith.    This  aspect  of 
Irish  mind  is  simply  ignored  in  Synge ;  it 


■m- 


72      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

has  no  place  in  his  works;  and  on  this 
score  his  fellow-countrymen  are  justified 
in  finding  fault  with  his  plays." 

Of  course,  we  know  very  well  that  the 
dramatist  is  not  compelled  to  treat  exclu- 
sively of  the  normal  in  his  works.  The 
abnormal  certainly  has  a  place  upon  the 
stage — it  is  both  suggestive  and  interest- 
ing. But  if  dramatists  treat  of  the  abnor- 
mal they  must  treat  it  as  abnormal.  For 
instance,  Shakespeare's  Macbeth  is  abnor- 
mal, and  when  presented  to  the  public  is 
regarded  as  abnormal.  The  murder  of 
Duncan  shocks  every  audience,  and  as 
Mr.  Bewley  says  in  the  Dublin  Review, 
"Shakespeare's  indictment  in  this  play  is 
against  an  individual  and  not  against  a 
nation.  In  Synge's  hands  the  story  would 
have  taken  a  very  different  'jhape:  Mac- 
beth would  openly  exult  in  his  murder, 
and  Banquo  and  Macduff  vie  with  one 
another  in  an  ecstasy  of  enthusiastic  loy- 
alty to  the  murderer:  retribution  would 


ili 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      73 

only  follow  when  it  was  discovered  that 
Duncan  was  not  dead  after  all." 

Yet,  however  faulty  may  be  many  of 
the  plays  of  Synge,  Yeats,  Lady  Gregory 
and  others  of  the  Irish  dramatists,  they 
mark  a  decided  renaissance  in  the  liter- 
ary life  of  Ireland.  With  this  stirring 
and  awakening  of  the  soul  of  Ireland  and 
the  dawning  of  new  national  life  among 
the  people,  we  may,  indeed,  look  some 
day  in  the  near  future  for  a  true  repre- 
sentative Irish  drama. 


y 


74      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


mil. 
I' 


CATHOUC  JOURNAUSTS  AND 
JOURNALISM 

Let  me  begin  this  paper  by  saying  that 
the  Catholic  press  of  America  is  not  very 
creditable  as  an  expression  or  reflection 
of  Catholic  life.  Not,  indeed,  but  that 
our  Catholic  editors  are  a  noble  band  of 
toiling,  struggling,  self-sacrificing  men. 
They  are  all  that.  Yet,  somehow  or  other, 
our  Catholic  journalism  in  America  is 
weak.  It  does  not  by  any  means  measure 
up  to  that  of  other  countries.  In  a  word, 
it  is  not  worthy  of  our  members  as  a  Cath- 
olic people  in  this  country. 

Nor  is  the  writer  of  this  paper  alone 
in  this  opinion.  In  a  recent  number  of 
The  Rosary  Magazine  the  editor,  com- 
menting on  the  "yellow"  journalism  of 
our  day,  points  out  the  need  of  a  better 
Catholic  press  in  this  country  in  the  fol- 
lowing timely  and  pertinent  paragraph : 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      75 


"There  is  imperative  need  of  a  Catho- 
lic awakening  in  the  matter  of  the  public 
press.  It  is  high  time  that  the  eighteen 
millions  of  Catholics  in  America  came  to 
a  realization  of  their  responsibility  and 
made  effective  protest  against  the  present 
intolerable  conditions.  Other  countries 
less  Catholic,  numerically,  than  our  own, 
support  a  vigorous  and  efficient  daily 
Catholic  press,  and  periodical  literature 
receives  in  them  the  encouragement  it  so 
richly  deserves.  Here  in  America,  where 
religion  is  unhampered,  no  English  Cath- 
olic daily  exists,  and  periodical  literature 
is  so  poorly  supported  that  many  excel- 
lent magazines  have  been  forced  to  sus- 
pend publication.  The  situation  is  by  no 
means  a  creditable  one  for  American 
Catholicity,  and  the  sooner  it  is  remedied 
the  better  it  will  be  both  for  the  Church 
and  the  nation." 

These  are  plain  words,  but  not  too 
plain  or  too  strong.  The  truth  is  that  not 
only  have  we  not  as  yet  a  single  English 


76      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


Catholic  daily  paper  in  America,  but  the 
great  body  of  our  English  Catholic  week- 
lies are  poor  affairs.  Why  is  this?  Well, 
to  my  mind,  it  is  due  to  several  causes. 
In  the  first  place,  the  Catholics  of  this 
country  have  not  yet  become  a  reading 
people.  They  are  fully  satisfied  with  the 
material  world  around  them  and  are 
hardly  yet  alive  to  the  needs  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  They  study  so  closely 
the  needs  of  the  kingdom  of  this  earth 
that  the  needs  of  faith  and  the  higher 
things  of  the  mind  and  soul  count  not. 

When  you  look  out  upon  the  field  of 
American  Catholic  journalism,  you  are 
really  amazed  at  the  little  that  we  have 
accomplished  in  this  direction.  Why, 
even  Australia,  with  less  than  a  million 
Catholics,  has  a  better  Catholic  press 
than  we  have.  Little  Switzerland,  with 
less  than  one-third  of  its  population  Cath- 
olic, has  a  much  better  Catholic  press 
than  we  have;  while  Holland,  with  al- 
most a  like  proportion  of  Catholics,  with 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      77 


its  fifteen  Catholic  dailies,  seventy-six 
Catholic  weeklies  and  seventy  monthlies, 
is  far  in  advance  of  what  we  may  hope  to 
be  within  the  next  half  century.  Ever 
England,  with  its  handful  of  Catholics, 
has  two  Catholic  weeklies — the  Catholic 
Times,  of  Liverpool,  and  the  Tablet,  of 
London,  which  are  of  a  very  superior 
order  and  character.  I  make  no  ref- 
erence here  to  the  magnificent  and  mas- 
terly Catholic  press  of  Germany,  decid- 
edly the  most  vigorous  in  all  Europe, 
so  creditably  represented  by  such  able 
journals  as  the  Cologne  Folkszeitung,  the 
Berlin  Germania  and  the  Allgemeine 
Rundschau  of  Munich,  nor  to  the  Catho- 
lic press  of  France,  which  during  the  last 
few  years,  owing  to  the  persecution  of  the 
Church  in  the  land  of  Ste.  Genevieve,  has 
developed  a  strength  and  vigor  credit- 
able, indeed,  to  the  Catholics  of  that 
country.  Had  this  Catholic  journalistic 
renaissance  marked  the  France  of  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  it  is  probable  that  no  ex- 


78      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

ploiting  church-despoilers   would  have 
ever  appeared  ipon  the  scene. 

Now,  according  to  Rev.  Father  Spil- 
lane,  S.  J.,  in  an  article,  "The  Catholic 
Press  in  Europe  and  America,"  contrib- 
uted to  America  some  two  years   ago, 
there  are  in  the  United  States  in  all  one 
hundred  and  twenty-eight  Catholic  pa- 
pers, of  which  fourteen  are  dailies  and 
one  hundred  and  fourteenweeklies.  These 
one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  papers  rep- 
resent journals  printed  in  English,  Ger- 
man, French,  Polish,  Bohemian,  Italian, 
Slavonic,     Maygar,     Dutch,     Croatian, 
Spanish  and  Indian.  Of  the  dailies,  seven 
are  French,  four  Polish,  two  German  and 
one  Bohemian. 

Does  it  not  seem  astounding  that  up 
to  the  present  no  English  Catholic  daily 
has  been  launched  in  the  United  States? 
I  do  not  know  what  proportion  of  the 
sixteen  million  Catholics  are  English- 
speaking,  but  suppose  we  put  it  at  eight 
million.    The  other  eight  million,  speak- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      79 

ing  a  foreign  tongue,  maintain  fourteen 
dailies.  But,  perhaps,  you  will  say  that 
the  fact  that  they  are  foreigners,  speaking 
an  alien  tongue,  binds  them  together  in 
support  of  their  own  dailies,  This,  to  an 
extent,  is  true.  But  is  it  possible  that 
language  has  a  more  unifying  force  than 
religion?  It  certainly  does  not  speak  Well 
for  the  English-speaking  Catholics  of  our 
country,  if  the  needs  of  faith  are  not 
higher  than  those  of  language. 

I  have  said  that  the  Catholic  people  of 
this  country  are  not  a  reading  people, 
and  I  am  quite  sure  of  this  fact.  Perhaps 
you  will  say  that  they  read  the  daily  secu- 
lar press.  But  even  that  would  not  con- 
stitute them  a  reading  people.  Reading 
is  a  good  deal  more  than  a  pastime.  It  is 
a  serious  act  of  the  mind,  implying  the 
presence  of  an  intellectual  hunger  that 
must  be  satisfied.  Now,  this  intellectual 
hunger  is  not  the  result  of  culture,  or  col- 
lege training,  but  is  present  in  every  nor- 
mal mind,  as  sure  and  constant  as  the  ap- 


8o      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


petite  for  three  daily  repasts.  It  is  true 
that  the  appetite  for  eating  is  imperious, 
while  the  appetite  for  reading  may  be 
flouted  without  any  danger  to  bodily  life. 
But  the  appetite  of  the  mind  neglected 
has  also  its  evil  results.  For  as  the  body 
will  weaken,  emaciate  and  lose  all  life- 
power  without  proper  nourishment,  so 
the  mind  shrivels,  narrows  and  withers, 
unless  sustained  by  a  fit  and  proper  diet 
of  thought,  which,  by  the  way,  is  largely 
supplied  through  the  medium  of  whole- 
■  some  reading. 

Of  course,  we  have  many,  many  Catho- 
lics in  this  country  who  are  careful  and 
serious  readers.  This  we  know  very  well. 
Yet,  the  fact  remains  that  the  great  bulk 
of  them  are  not.  Would  you  not  think 
that  where  such  activity  is  shown  by  our 
"courts"  and  "councils"  in  organizing 
"box  socials,"  "smokers"  and  "vaude- 
villes," and  all  that  belongs  to  chasing  the 
flitting  hours  with  tripping  feet,  some  in- 
terest might  be  cultivated,  too,  in  the  for- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      8i 


tunes  of  the  Catholic  press?  Would  it  or 
should  it  be  too  much  to  expect  that  Cath- 
olic families  that  willingly  pay  homage 
to  the  exactions  qf  "society,"  in  the  out- 
lay of  time  and  money,  would,  too,  sub- 
scribe for  the  Catholic  paper,  whose  edi- 
tor, is  ever  battling  for  their  rights— a 
sentinel  in  the  watch-towers  of  faith,  a 
warrior  with  buckler  and  shield,  parry- 
ing, defending  and  advancing? 

Of  what  use  is  all  this  society  bluff  and 
bubble,  if  we  Catholics  do  not  march  un- 
der intellectual  orders?    We  speak  with 
pride  of  the  increase  in  our  numbers,  but 
does  the  character  and  quality  of  our 
Catholic    life    keep    pace  with  this  in- 
crease? Are  there  not  thousands  of  Cath- 
olic homes  in  our  land  today  emptj'  of 
Catholic  ideals,  destitute  of  that  quicken- 
ing life  which  comes  through  the  fires  of 
faith,  lit  up  by  the  torch  of  Catholic  intel- 
ligence?   How  then,  I  ask,  can  our  Cath- 
olic people  be  intelligent  if  they  neither 
read  nor  think,  and,  alas!  how  many  thou- 


82      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


w 


sands  of  them  do  neither?    I  often  won- 
der what  becomes  in  after  life,  in  the 
lists  of  knightly  struggle,  amid  the  lar- 
gesses that  are  showered  from  the  world's 
hands,  of  the  innumerable  young  men  and 
women  who  annually  garland  the  gradu- 
ating stages  of  our  Catholic  colleges  and 
academies.     Presumably,  they  have  been 
drinking  in  for  years,  under  careful  guid- 
ance and  direction,  the  best  there  is  in 
Catholic  life  and  literature.     Have  they 
proved  true  to  the  principles  imbibed,  or 
have  they  hearkened  to  the  tempter  and 
looked  down  towards  Camelot,  weaving 
into  the  web  of  life  not  the  spiritual  beau- 
ty of  Catholic  truth  and  faith,  but  the 
shadow  of  sin  and  falsehood  that  falls 
athwart  their  path  on  every  side  in  a 
world  whose  morality  is  oft  based  not 
upon  God's  decalogue,  but  upon  the  shift- 
ing judgments  of  humanity,  with  all  its 
caprices  of  fashions  and  passions? 

Is  it,  I  ask,  too  much  to  expect  that 
these  young  graduates,  full  of  the  flush 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      83 

and  optimism  of  a  ribbon-tied  diploma 
or  degree,  should,  when  they  go  out  into 
the  world,  be  able  to  do  something  for  the 
furtherance  of  Catholic  journalism  and 
Catholic  letters?  And  the  question  that 
besets  us  here  is:  Are  they  doing  it? 

But,  you  will  probably  ask  here,  what 
has  this  to  do  with  Catholic  journalists 
and  journalism?    I  answer,  a  great  deal. 
We  may  have  our  Dr.  Brownsons,  our 
Frederick  Lucases,  our  Louis  Veuillots, 
but  if  our  Catholic  people,  one  and  all, 
are  not  alive  to  the  needs  and  tiie  value 
of  an  able  and  vigorous  Catholic  press, 
and  are  not  willing  to  do  everything  in 
their  power  to  support  it,  your  Brown- 
sons,  your  Veuillots,  your  Lucases  will 
labor  and  toil  and  make  sacrifice  in  vain. 
Of  course,  it  will  be  alleged— and  with 
a  great  deal  of  truth— that  a  great  many 
of  our  Catholic  papers  in  this  country  are 
poorly  edited   and  do   not  interest  the 
Catholic    reader.      Unfortunately,    this 
charge  and  contention  has  a  basis  of  fact. 


84      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


I 


But,  if  the  Catholic  journals  of  this  coun- 
try are  not  well  edited,  pray,  who  is  to 
blame?    You  cannot  expect  one  man  to 
do  the  work  of  three;  and  that  is  what 
most  of  the  Catholic  editors  of  this  coun- 
try are  doing.     However,  doing  the  work 
of  three  would  not  be  so  bad  if  the  Cath- 
olic editor  was  not  expected  to  do  this 
work  for  half  the  salary  that  should  be  at- 
tached to  it.    Is  it  too  much,  I  ask,  to  ex- 
pect that  the  Catholic  journalist,  whose 
scholarship  has  entailed  long  years  of 
study  and  very  great  expense,  and  whose 
reputation  as  a  writer  is  firmly  estab- 
lished, should  at  least  receive  as  much 
salary  as  the  business  manager  of  a  Cath- 
olic journal, whose  intellectual  equipment 
is  generally  inferior  to  that  of  the  editor, 
and  whose  occupation  is  divided  between 
looking  after  his  subscription  list  and  in- 
structing his   advertis'ng  agents?     We 
wonder,  some  times,  why  we  have  not  bet- 
ter Catholir  journals  in  this  country.    It 
is,  indeed,  plain  to  anybody  that  we  can 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      85 

never  have  in  this  country  first-class  Cath- 
olic joumah  until  we  concede  to  the 
Catholic  editor  his  place,  and  not  reduce 
him  financially  to  the  position  of  a  liter- 
ary tramp.  Let  me  say  that,  if  this  state- 
rnent  is  challenged,  I  shall  go  further  into 
the  matter  .nd  publish  the  salaries  of  the 
editors  of  twenty  of  our  leading  Catholic 

Touching  the  question  of  the  salary  of 
Catholic  editors,  Mr.  A.  M.  Raybould 
in  an  able  paper  on  "The  Apostolate  of 
h       .T/  ^°"*"buted  to  a  recent  num- 
ber of  The  Rosary  Magazine,  says: 

The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire,  and 
the  best  work  should  command  the  best 
pay-  I  he  man  who  is  devoting  his  life 
and  talents  to  the  furthering  of  Catholic 
Idea  s  through  good  journalism  is  doing 
a  valuable  work  for  the  Church,  and  de 
serves  not  only  a  wage  by  which  to  live, 
but  also  that  support  and  encouragemen 

wid^out  which  the  bes^  work  muftulti- 
mately  fail. 


86      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


"If  the  Catholic  press  is  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  times,  if  it  is  to  reach  the 
level  of  the  non-Catholic  press,  it  must  be 
able  to  secure  the  best  jour  lalistic  effort 
and  to  pay  for  it  as  it  i^  paid  for  else- 
where. Owing  to  the  comparative  pov- 
erty of  the  Catholic  body,  and  perhaps 
also  to  the  higher  aims  of  Catholic  jour- 
nalism which  militate  against  its  financial 
success,  this  is  impossible  without  the  co- 
operation of  the  whole  Catholic  com- 
munity. If  the  Catholic  press  is  to  be 
that  mighty  power  for  good  which  it 
might  be  and  which  the  times  demand,  it 
must  be  raised  by  the  generosity  of  the 
public  to  that  standard  of  excellence 
which  carries  with  it  the  assurance  of 
success." 

But  we  will  never  have  "that  standard 
of  excellence"  till  we  have  strong  and 
scholarly  Catholic  editors  behind  the  edi- 
torial pens.  It  does  not  follow  that  the 
Catholic  editor,  in  order  to  be  a  success, 
should  be  an  academician  or  a  poet  or  a 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      87 

savant,  but  he  should  be  a  scholar  of  both 
deep  and  broad  information,  possessing  a 
profound  and  accurate  knowledge  of 
Catholic  truth,  having  a  clear  perception 
of  the  life  and  policy  of  the  Catholic 
Church  in  every  age,  and  especially  in 
our  own  age,  and  be  able  to  detect  error 
in  a  moment,  whether  under  a  social  eco- 
nomic or  art  form.  In  a  word,  he  should 
possess,  above  all,  the  Catholic  instinct. 

But,  you  will  ask,  can  such  editors  be 
found?    Decidedly  so.     You  will   find 
them  on  the  great  Catholic  papers  of  Eu- 
rope; and  they  can  be  grown  here  in 
America,  if  we  will  but  make  the  condi- 
tions of  their  growth  favorable.  We  have 
had  our  McMasters,   our   Hickeys,  our 
Boyle  O'Reillys,  our  Father  Lamberts 
and  our  Father  Cronins.    Surely,  we  do 
not  despair   of   finding  their  successors 
amid  the  golden  journalistic  grain  now 
being  sown  in  the  Catholic  furrows  of 
America.     But  we  must  iearn  to  treat 
our  Catholic  journali!=ts  with  sympathy 


I'^J 


k 


88      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

and  justice.  It  is  true  that  we  arc  living 
in  a  hard,  material  age,  when  the  ideal- 
ism of  Catholic  journalism  is  unevenly 
matched  with  the  realism  of  selfishness 
and  greed,  and  honor  is  well-nigh  an 
empty  name  in  the  household  and  econo- 
my of  the  business  relations  of  life.  But 
this,  nevertheless,  should  not  shut  out 
from  our  vision  and  realization  the  duty 
we  owe  our  Catholic  journalists  and  those 
who  hold  aloft  the  torch  that  illumines 
and  leads  to  higher  and  nobler  planes  of 
life  and  living. 

Several  of  our  Catholic  colleges  have 
recently  established  departments  of  jour- 
nalism where  young  men  can  equip  them- 
selves for  journalistic  work,  where  they 
can  gain  not  only  the  necessary  knowl- 
edge of  the  general  principles  of  journal- 
ism, but  acquire,  too,  what  is  far  more 
essential,  a  feeling  of  the  moral  responsi- 
bility that  rests  upon  them  as  Catholic 
journalists. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      89 


It  is  well,  indeed,  that  these  chairs  of 
journalism  have  been  established  in  our 
Catholic  colleges,  but  if   the  Catholic 
press  in  America  has  nothing  better  to 
offer  in  a  pecuniary  way  than  is  now  in 
its  keeping,  if  it  looks  upon  the  Catholic 
editor  as  solely  a  kind  of  an  adventitious 
necessity  for  the  exploitation  of  the  busi- 
ness end  of  the  paper,  these  young  Catho- 
lics, with  all  their  fine  journalistic  ethics 
in  their  college  handbags,  will,  after  their 
graduation  from  the  department  of  jour- 
nalism, betake  themselves  straightway  to 
the  offices  of  our  daily  secular  papers, 
where  their  work  will  meet  with  due  rec- 
ognition and  fair  compensation.     Here 
their  Catholic  principles  will  assuredly 
suffer  a  shock,  for  they  will  find  that  the 
moral  journalistic  code  of  the  office  is 
sometimes  no  higher  than  the  dividends 
of  the  paper  or  the  veneered  respecta- 
bility of  society. 

Now,  what  is  the  burden  of  my  arraign- 
ment of  the  Catholic  press  of  this  country 


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90      Essays  on  Catholic  Life, 


today?  First,  that  it  is  weak  and  entirely 
inadequate  to  the  needs  of  the  Catholic 
people  of  this  country.  Secondly,  that 
this  weakness  is  due  chiefly  to  two  causes : 
lack  of  moral  and  financial  support  on 
the  part  of  our  Catholic  people,  who  are 
wanting  intellectually  in  an  appreciation 
of  the  value  of  a  Catholic  journal  and  its 
need  as  a  defender  and  exponent  of  Cath- 
olic principles,  and  the  further  fact  that 
we  lack  as  yet  in  this  country  a  great  corps 
of  strong,  scholarly,  vigorous  and  well- 
informed  Catholic  journalists,  ready  to 
cope  with  any  question  that  may  arise. 

Note  well,  too,  I  pray  you,  that  in  the 
whole  history  of  Catholic  journalism  in 
this  country  there  has  not  been  one  single 
Catholic  journal  that  has  achieved  great- 
ness save  through  the  greatness  of  its  edi- 
tor. This  is  really  a  truism  and,  there- 
fore, needs  no  demonstration — no  proof. 

It  was  a  McMaster  who  made  the  New 
York  Freeman's  Journal,  and  the  pen  of  a 
Father  Lambert  who  again  gave  it  a  pow- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      91 


erful  resurrection.  It  was  the  journalis- 
tic genius  of  a  Boyle  O'Reilly  who  made 
the  Boston  Pilot  at  one  time  the  greatest 
Catholic  paper  in  America.  It  was  a 
Father  Cronin's  facile  and  polished  pen 
that  made  the  Catholic  Union  and  Times, 
of  Buffalo,  N.  Y.,  a  welcomed  visitor 
everywhere. 

Some  of  our  Catholic  editors  of  today 
seem  to  be  afraid  of  making  their  paper 
too  literary.  This  is  a  mistake.  Does  it,  I 
ask,  weaken  your  argument  in  discussing 
a  moral  or  economic  question  to  set  it 
forth  in  polished  or  ornate  language? 
Know,  too,  that  the  higher  things  of  the 
soul  are  not  found  on  the  earth  measured 
by  the  yard.  There  is  a  touch  of  heaven 
in  everything  that  is  good,  and  this  touch 
of  heaven  the  Catholic  journalist  would 
do  well  to  put  into  his  paper. 

Now,  as  to  the  manner  or  method  of 
editing  a  Catholic  paper:  this  is  alto- 
gether a  matter  of  indivdual  judgment 
and  taste,  and  must  depend  upon  the  ideal 


f  i 


92      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


and  gifts  of  the  editor  himself,  and  what 
he  wishes  specially  to  emphasize  in  his 
work.  Nearly  all  great  Catholic  jour- 
nals have  some  special  commendable  fea- 
tures. It  is,  therefore,  the  height  of  fol- 
ly, if  not  the  height  of  discourtesy,  to  lec- 
ture and  schoolmaster  a  brother  journal- 
ist as  to  how  he  should  conduct  or  better 
his  paper.  Of  course,  we  may  at  all  times 
discuss  the  general  principles  of  jouranl- 
ism  without  any  violation  of  journalistic 
courtesy. 

At  the  first  convention  of  the  American 
Catholic  Press  Association,  held  in  Co- 
lumbus, Ohio,  in  August,  191 1,  the  writer 
of  this  paper,  referring  to  the  method  of 
editing  a  Catholic  paper,  said:  "As 
to  the  work  of  Catholic  journalism,  I  do 
not  think  that  there  is  any  best  way  to 
conduct  a  Catholic  journal.  We  all  pos- 
sess individual  gifts.  Let  each  develop 
his  own  through  the  columns  of  his  paper. 
One  journalist  is  a  good  paragrapher,  an- 
other a  good  feature  writer,  still  another 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      93 


has  the  news  Instinct.  Let  us,  then,  give 
our  respective  journals  the  stamp  of  our 
own  individuality." 

In  this  connection,  too,  it  will  be  re- 
membered that  one  member  of  the  Cath- 
olic Press  Association  inferentially  held 
that  only  official  Catholic  papers  could 
safely  and  successfully  do  the  great  work 
of  Catholic  journalism.  Now,  touching 
this,  I  would  say  that  any  Catholic  jour- 
nalist who  realizes  his  position  as  a  Cath- 
olic journalist  should  at  all  times  wi.  ag- 
ly  sit  at  the  feet  of  HolyChurch  and  learn 
of  her  wisdom,  for  assuredly  a  Church 
possessed  of  the  wisdom  of  nineteen  hun- 
dred years  must  know  a  good  deal  more 
than  the  individual.  Yet  the  difference 
between  voluntarily  drinking  in  this  wis- 
dom at  the  feet  of  the  Church  and  mak- 
ing of  a  Catholic  paper  a  mere  episcopal 
echo,  is  very  great.  As  a  species  of  Cath- 
olic journalism  I  do  not  think  that  the  lat- 
ter has  ever  proved  a  success. 


94      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


But,  however  much  Catholic  editors 
may  differ  in  their  methods  of  journal- 
ism, they  should  be  one  in  the  bonds  of 
amity,  good  will  and  the  proclamation  oi 
Catholic  truth.  In  no  other  place  can 
there  be  better  revealed  Christian  charity 
and  greatness  of  soul  than  behind  an  edi- 
torial pen.  The  true  Catholic  editor  must 
needs  divest  himself,  if  he  would  do  God's 
work,  of  all  pettiness  and  all  peevishness, 
all  jaundice  and  jealousy.  He  stands  at 
all  times  for  Catholic  truth  and  all  the 
Christian  charity  implied  in  Catholic 
truth.  His  mission  is  from  God,  and  he 
must  remember  at  all  times  the  Great 
Captain  under  Whom  he  serves.  He 
should  remember,  too,  that  the  household 
of  the  faith  is  made  up  of  many  races  and 
that  in  the  eyes  of  his  Captain  and  Master 
there  is  no  best  race.  And,  therefore, 
neither  by  insinuation  nor  inference-will 
he  attack  any  race  or  set  one  in  its  virtues 
or  merits  above  another.  They  are  all 
God's  children,  and  a  true  Catholic  jour- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.      95 


nalist,  a  knight  of  God  in  the  service 
which  he  renders,  will  know  no  race,  yet 
all. 


96      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


THE   RELATION   OF   THE  CATH- 

OUC  JOURNAL  TO  CATHOUC 

LITERATURE 

lA  paper  read  at  the  Catholic  Preis  Convention,  Colum- 
bus, Ohio,  Auguat,  1911.I 

Let  me  say  at  the  outset  that  it  is  in  no 
c-.nventional  manner  that  I  express  the 
great  pleasure  it  aflFords  me  to  be  present 
here  today  and  share  in  the  program  of 
the  papers,  discussions  'ind  deliberations 
of  this  convention. 

I  wish,  however,  to  modify  the  title  of 
my  paper  somewhat  from  what  it  appears 
on  the  printed  program,  for  I  am  not  so 
much  concerned  in  the  good  fortune  of 
secular  literature  as  I  am  in  the  promo- 
tion of  Catholic  literature,  and  I  there- 
fore desire  the  title  of  my  subject  to  read: 
"The  Relation  of  the  Catholic  Journal  to 
Catholic  Literature." 

As  you  know,  I  have  been  assigned  a 
most  important  subject — one  which  links 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


97 


together,  so  to  speak,  the  intellectual  hero- 
ism of  Catholicity,  for  assuredly  it  needs 
heroism  today  to  carry  on  the  great  work 
of  Catholic  journalism,  and  a  still  greater 
heroism  to  devote  oneself  to  the  promo- 
tion of  Catholic  letters  where  in  both  in- 
stances the  pecuniary  rewards  are  so  small 
and  disheartening. 

You  remember  that  in  the  spiritual  de- 
velopment of  the  Church  in  the  Middle 
Ages  there  appeared  two  great  Orders  of 
Mendicant  Friars  who,  by  their  zeal  and 
virtues,  changed  the  spiritual  face  of  Eu- 
rope.    These   two   great   Orders   were 
marked,  respectively,  by  two  great  char- 
acteristics or  virtues— courage,  or  mili- 
tancy, if  you  will,  and  poverty.    May  I 
liken  Catholic  journalism  to  the  work  of 
St.  Dominic,  which  was  essentially  a  work 
of  courage  or  militancy,  for  I  regard  the 
first  essential  of  a  Catholic  journalist  to 
be  courage— militancy;  and  may  I  liken 
the  work  of  the  Catholic  author  to  the 
work  of  the  great  and  humble  brown- 


98      Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

hooded  friar  of  Assisi,  whose  chicfest  vir- 
tue was  poverty. 

Then  note  well,  too,  that  these  two 
great  saints   of   God   worked  together, 
aided  each  other,  admired   each   other, 
loved   each   other.     So   may   we   hope 
that  Catholic  journalism  and  Catholic  au- 
thorship will  work  hand  in  hand  in  this 
our  country,  admiring  each  other,  aiding 
each  other,  loving  each  other.    For,  in- 
deed, we  scarcely  know  which  the  more 
to  admire— a  McMaster,  a  John  Boyle 
O'Reilly,  a  Father  Cronin,a  Father  Lam- 
bert, a  Charles  J.  O'Malley  of  Catholic 
journalism,  or  in  the  domain  of  Catholic 
letters,  a  Dr.  Brownson,  towering  in  mas- 
sive thought  above  his  fellows,  a  Father 
Hecker  devoting  his  life  to  a  setting  forth 
of  the  fact  that  there  is  perfect  harmony 
between  Catholic  teaching  and  the  spirit 
of  republican  institutions,  a  great  Arch- 
bishop Spalding  giving  us  his  magnificent 
historical  essays,  a  Brother  Azarias,  an 
humble  follower  of  St.  de  la  Salle,  the 


Essay    in  Catholic  Life.      99 

founder  of  modern  pedagogy,  with  fine 
poise,  deep  insight  and  broad  literary 
sympathies,  giving  us  in  essay  form  his 
splendid  literary  judgments. 

These  are,  indeed,  some  of  the  glorious 
names— Catholic  names— that  are  an  in- 
spiration to  us  todav.  These  giants  of 
Catholic  truth  and  teaching  have  be- 
queathed to  us  their  mantles.  We  justly 
hold  their  memories  dear.  I  am  sure 
their  spirit  has  still  an  abiding  place  in 
this  assemblage: 

"Not  here  I  Oh,  yes,  our  hearts  their  presence  feel; 

Viewless,  not  voiceless,  from  the  ilistant  shells  on  mem- 
ory's shore, 

Harmonious  echoes  steal  and  names  which  In  the  days 

Gone  by  were  spells,  are  blent  with  that  soft  music. 

If  there   dwells   the   spirit  here  our  country's  fame   to 
spread. 

While  every  breast  with  joy  and  triumph  swells 

And  earth  reverberates  to  our  meaured  tread. 
Banner  and  wreath  should  own  our  reverence  for   ,;be 
dead." 

And  SO  we  do  own  our  reverence  for 
the  dead,  and  to  their  memory  is  erected 
an  altar  of  gratitude  in  every  heart. 


100 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


It  is  evident  to  every  thinking  man  that 
the  Catholic  journal  is  not  only  a  powrcr 
for  the  propagation  and  defense  of  Catho- 
lic truth,  but  a  potent  instrument  to  spread 
and,  indeed,  nurture  a  Catholic  literature. 
Surely  if,  as  the  great  Bishop  Von  Kettc- 
ler  of  Mayence  once  said, "Were  St.  Paul, 
the  Apostle,  once  more  to  visit  the  earth 
and  mingle  in  its  strenuous  affairs,  he 
would  most  likely  become  a  journalist," 
weCatholicjournalists  cannot  set  too  high 
a  value  upon  the  work— the  task  intrusted 
to  us,  nor  can  we  too  fully  realize  or  ap- 
preciate the  magnificent  responsibilities 
as  Catholic  editors  that  are  placed  in  our 
hands. 

We  are  quite  aware  that  the  task  of 
building  up  a  Catholic  literature  in  this 
country  is  a  difficult  one;  that  the  Cath- 
olic author  has  to  contend  with  many 
things;  that  in  this  material  and  skeptical 
age,  when  negation  of  faith  and  a  blind 
worship  of  earthly  conquest  fill  the  soul 
of  man  on  every  side,  it  seems  a  very  spcr 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life,     ioi 

cies  of  heroism  for  the  Catholic  writer 

with  faith  in  his  heart  and  upon  his  lips! 

to  enter  the  literary  lists  and  share  in  its 

J"usts  and  tournaments. 

Yet,  thank  God,  we  hav*^  Catholic  men 
and  women  of  this  mould  -Catholic  men 
and  women  who,  whether  the  applause  be 
deafening  or  scant,  the  bouquets  rained 
upon  them  many  or  few,  are  ready  tr  up- 
hold Catholic  truth  and  Catholic  p  .,ci- 
ples  in  the  literary  lists  and  so  contend  for 
that  heavenly  prize  which  is  not  of  the 
gift  of  kings. 

But  the  question  arises  here,  are  we 
Catholic  journalists  doing  our  duty  to- 
ward these  heroic  Catholic  writers  who 
contending  with  adverse  circumstances,' 
are  laboring  to  create  and  build  up  in  this 
country  a  veritable  Catholic  literature?  I 
fear  very  much  that  we  give  them  seldom 
either  bouquets  or  applause. 

Now  I  hold  most  firmly  to  the  conten- 
tion that  we  Catholics  must  not  only  ere- 
ate  and  support  our  own  Catholic  educa- 


^'' 


102    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


u 


tional  institutions,  but  we  must  also  cre- 
ate, nurture  and  maintain  our  own  Catho- 
lic literature.  This  is  clearly  evident  to 
any  one  who  realizes  our  position  as  a 
Catholic  people. 

What  part,  think  you,  then,  should  the 
Catholic  journalist  take  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  this  Catholic  literature— in  its 
dissemination,  nay,  I  was  going  to  say,  in 
its  popularization?     Assuredly,  a  great 
and  significant  part.    Indeed,  the  Catho- 
lic journal  should  be  a  leading  factor  in 
the  fostering  of  a  Catholic  literature.    It 
should,  through  its  columns,  be  an  inspi- 
ration itself  to  all  that  is  highest  and  best 
in  Catholic  art  and  literature,  and  should 
constantly  familiarize  its  readers  with  the 
great  Catholic  literary  masterpieces  of 
every  land.    If  the  Catholic  journal  does 
not  do  this,  pray  where  will  our  Catholic 
youth  find  it? 

Behold  how  our  Catholic  schools  and 
academies  have  multiplied  during  the 
past  twenty-five  years!     What  splendid 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     103 

opportunity  there  is  in  them  for  the  fur- 
thering of  Catholic  literature.  Our  Cath- 
o he  journal  that  finds  its  way  into  these 
cloisters  of  prayer  and  meditation-into 
these  halls  and  sanctuaries  of  study- 
should  It  not  be  a  guide,  an  inspiration, 
an  unerring  voice  to  these  good  religious 
n  their  studies,  in  their  daily  readings,  in 
their  literary  causeries  with  their  pupils? 
In  the  last  analysis,  then,  the  Catholic 
purnal  is  the  greatest  factor  in  our  coun- 
try for  the  promotion  of  Catholic  litera- 
ure  and,  through  the  medium  of  Catho- 
olic  truth"'^'^°'  tJ^e  propagation  of  Cath- 

No  Red  Cross  knight  in  the  Holy  Land 
was  ever  more  vigilant  of  his  duties  than 
should  be  the  Catholic  journalist  in  his 
relation  to  every  phase  of  Catholic  life 
around  him.  Catholic  literature  is  but 
the  expression  of  Catholic  life,  and  to 
preserve  its  sanctity  should  be  the  aim 
and  purpose  of  every  true  Knight  of  God 
Now  as  to  the  work  of  Catholic  jour- 


1 , 


m 


I04    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


nalism,  I  do  not  think  there  is  any  best 
way  to  conduct  a  Catholic  journal.  We 
all  possess  individual  gifts.  Let  each  de- 
velop his  own  through  the  columns  of  his 
paper.  One  journalist  is  a  good  para- 
grapher,  another  a  good  editorial  writer, 
another  a  good  feature  writer,  still  an- 
other has  the  news  instinct.  Let  us  then 
give  our  respective  journals  the  stamp  of 
our  own  individuality. 

There  is,  however,  one  thing  we  can 
cultivate,  and  that  is  amity  and  good 
will.  As  the  unity  of  the  Church  proves 
its  divine  mission,  so  let  the  unity  of 
Catholic  journalism  prove  our  divine 
mission  as  Catholic  journalists.  Catholic 
journals  may  differ  in  non-essentials,  but 
in  one  thing  we  must  and  should  be  a  unit 
in  the  proclamation  of  Catholic  truth. 
Catholic  truth  should  inform  every  page, 
column  and  line  of  a  Catholic  journal. 
For  it  would  be  base  and  cowardly  to  be- 
tray the  standard  of  Christ  under  which 
we  serve. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


105 


WHAT  IS  CRITICISM? 

The  role  of  the  critic,  it  will  readily  be 
admitted,  is  a  difficult  and  delicate  one 
He  cannot  very  well  be  universally  popu- 
lar, for  the  popular  man  is  he  who  likes 
every  thing,  has  no  severe  canons  of  taste 
IS  easily  satisfied  and  is  most  elastic  and 
accommodating  in  his  judgments. 

It  is  Ruskin  who  says  that  a  strong 
critic  is  every  man's  adversary.  It  is  felt 
that  his  business  is  to  seek  out  the  foibles 
and  lay  bare  that  which  lacks  the  virtues 
of  soul  and  intellect,  summing  up  fear- 
lessly the  man  and  his  work. 

Yet  critics  we  must  have.  They  are  a 
necessity.  What  would  art  and  literature 
be  if  we  had  no  critics  to  appraise  the 
work  of  pen  and  brush— to  extol  or  con- 
demn, to  differentiate  between  what  is  of 
value  and  what  is  worthless?  Before  we 
are  satisfied  that  a  poem  or  painting  is 


io6    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


i :  f 


3  f'i 


great  we  like  to  have  the  opinion  of  con- 
noisseurs as  to  its  value  and  merit. 

But  there  are  critics  and  critics,  and  to- 
day our  intellectual  life  is  so  full  of  ve- 
neer and  pretension  that  not  everyone 
who  offers  judgments  on  art  and  litera- 
ture should  be  regarded  as  qualified  or 
acceptable  to  fill  the  role  of  critic.  In 
fact,  while  the  creative  gift  in  art  and  lit- 
erature here  in  America  is  not  at  all  con- 
spicuous today,  I  am  not  quite  sure  but 
that  it  exceeds  the  critcal  gift  amongst  us. 
This  is  largely  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
intellectual  parvenu  has  gained  and  holds 
such  a  prominent  place  in  the  limelight. 

I  think  we  can  well  say  of  the  true  crit- 
ic, as  we  say  of  the  poet,  "nascitur  non  fit." 
That  is,  the  true  critic  is  born  with  the  en- 
dowment of  a  critic — with  taste,  insight, 
fine  natural  discrimination,  sense  of  beau- 
tj',  and  judicial  poise.  Of  course,  all  these 
are  developed  by  study  and  wide  reading, 
b'U  the  faculty  must  be  already  there, 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     107 

otherwise  all  study  and  reading  will  be  in 
vain. 

Matthew  Arnold  sets  down  disinterest- 
edness as  the  one  great  rule  of  criticism, 
and  in  this  I  think  he  is  entirely  right. 
No  partisan,  however  sincere  may  be  his 
convictions,  can  be  a  good  critic,  for  he 
has  but  one  viewpoint,  and  that  he  has 
taken  as  a  partisan  or  interested  judge. 
Friendship  and  cliquism  are  death  to  true 
and  valuable  criticism,  for  both  imply 
partisanship   and  exclude  an  impartial 
judgment.     Both  render  a  criticism  nar- 
row and  biased,  for  they  shut  out  all  con- 
sideration of  literary  or  artistic  merit, 
save  within  the  radius  of  a  chosen  few. 
Witness  to  this  fact  is  found  in  the  hun- 
dreds of  criticisms  that  fill  the  pages  of 
our  reviews  and  journals  revealing  on 
their  very  face  the  partisan  spirit  of  the 
reviewer. 

Yet  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  avoid  as 
a  critic  the  literary,  art,  religious,  or  po- 
litical influence  of  one's  birth,  environ- 


io8    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


ment  and  education.  Look,  too,  at  what 
an  important  part  race  plays  in  our  judg- 
ments. For  an  Anglo-Saxon  to  under- 
stand Latin  genjus  or  Latin  institutions 
seems  to  me  well-nigh  impossible.  And 
you  might  reverse  this  and  be  also  close 
to  the  truth.  Just  read,  for  instance,  Vol- 
taire's judgment  on  Shakespeare,  or 
Taine's  valuation  of  the  poet  Tennyson. 

So  every  school,  too,  of  political  thought, 
as  well  as  every  school  of  art  and  litera- 
ture, has  its  gospel  and  ten  command- 
ments, and  if  you  would  hope  to  have 
your  work  proclaimed  or  fairly  criticised, 
it  would  be  well  that  you  would  enroll 
yourself  first  as  a  member  of  the  esoteric 
circle.  It  is  hard  te  get  absolute  justice 
and  stand  outside  the  door  of  the  temple. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  the  nineteenth 
century,  especially  its  first  half,  was  char- 
acterized by  a  continuous  war  among  the 
critics,  who  fired  from  behind  the  ram- 
parts of  an  Edinburgh  Review,  a  Black- 
wood's Magazine,  a  Quarterly  Review  or 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     109 

a  London  Times.    Nor  was  it  any  better 
within  the  literary  fortifications  of  Paris 
The  winged  shaft  that  the  Frenchman 
shoots  ,n  literary  anger  is  sure  to  have 
much  poison  on  its  point,  though  directed 
with  a  death-dealing  Gallic  grace  as  it 
reaches  and  rankles  in  the  heart  of  an  op- 
ponent.    For  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  undoubtedly  not  only 
an  age  of  religious  controversy,  but  an 
age  of  literary  controversy  as  well. 

Here  in  America  we  have  commercial- 
ized criticism  as  we  have  commercialized 
well-nigh  everything.     If  the  reviewer 
can  see  any  dollars  ahead,  with  a  hint 
from  the  business  manager,  he  will  read- 
ily find  complimentary  adjectives  for  the 
work  under  review   and    speak   of   the 
promise  and  potency  in  this  young  ris- 
ing author."    Nay,  more,  he  will  fnsert 
in  the  literary  columns  a  cut-and-dried 
review  of  a  book  sent  by  its  publisher, 
though    the    puffery    should    give    this 
green  goods"  author  a  place  beside  the 


iio    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

great  literary  immortals — all  this,  of 
course,  provided  there  is  any  money  in  it 
for  his  journal. 

Bliss  Perry,  for  some  years  editor  of 
that  literary  and  sane  magazine,  the  At- 
lantic Monthly, ha.^  recently  touched  upon 
this  point  in  an  article  dealing  with  criti- 
cism and  reviews.  Mr.  Perry  has  further 
pointed  out  that  a  large  amount  of  the  re- 
viewing done  on  our  American  periodi- 
cals and  journals  is  the  work  of  young 
writers  who  lack  both  adequate  scholar- 
ship and  training  for  the  task. 

I  am  not  surprised,  however,  that  the 
work  of  literary  criticism  here  in  Amer- 
ica is  so  inferior.  The  truth  is,  we  are  all 
in  too  great  a  hurry  to  gain  distinction  in 
anything.  We  will  not  wait  for  the  seed 
to  spring  up,  grow  strong  and  ripen. 
Everything  is  haste,  criticism  amongst 
others.  If  we  do  not  know  a  subject,  let 
us  pretend  we  do.  Have  we  not  stock 
phrases  supplied  to  us  in  art  and  litera- 
ture?   Who  will  then  dare  to  prevent  us 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


in 


feamcd?"^  *^«e  Phrases  and  thus  appear 

But,  weak  as  is  the  secular  press  of 
America  in  its  literary  criticism  and  re- 
views, the  Catholic  press  of  this  country 
IS  still  weaker.    With  the  exception  of  a 
few  Catholic  journals,  such  as  America, 
whose  literary  notes  and  book  reviews  are 
generally  scholarly  and  discriminating, 
the  literary  critiques  found  in  American 
Catholic  journals  and,  indeed,  in  some  of 
the  American   Catholic   magazines,  are 
not  very  creditable,  revealing  sometimes 
narrowness,  sometimes   absolute  lack  of 
literary  judgment,  and  occasionally  per- 
sonal spleen.  ^ 

It  is  not  very  long  ago  since  a  Catholic 
magazine  of  this  country,  in  reviewing  a 
volume  of  poems,  some  of  which  it  had 
praised  highly  a  few  years  before,  carved 
the  volume  as  a  dish  fit  for  the  gods  The 
critic  may  have  been  some  half-baked 
academy  graduate,  whose  whole  knowl- 
edge of  literature  was  gained  in  a  regents' 


I' 

I 


112    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

examination.  In  truth,  this  supposition  is 
strengthened  by  the  fart  that  the  reviewer 
in  question  confounded  in  the  critique  the 
poets  of  England  with  those  of  America, 
showing  thereby  even  a  lack  of  elemen- 
tary knowledge  of  the  well-known  writers 
of  our  day.  It  is  true  that  our  Catholic 
journalists  r  e  very  busy — indeed,  very 
often  they  do  the  work  of  three.  By  the 
very  nature  of  things,  these  Catholic 
writers  must  be  a  kind  of  "Johannes  Fac- 
totum"— editorial  writers,  knights  of  the 
scissors,  paragraphers,  moral  instructors, 
proofreaders  and  book  reviewers. 

We  well  know,  then,  what  kind  of  book 
reviews  we  may  expect.  To  begin  with, 
the  overworked  Catholic  editor  may  have 
but  a  limited  knowledge  of  books.  His 
time  does  not  permit  him  to  read.  And 
so  we  get  what?  Exactly  this  result:  no- 
tices of  books  frequently  that  have  no 
value  as  guides  to  what  is  worth  reading. 
These  notices,  or  shall  we  call  them  re- 
views, help  the  publisher,  it  is  true,  for 


ESSAVS  ON  CAfHOUC  LiPE.      ,,3 

day  >h,ef,"""«  '■'"■'''-tha,  i,  .„ry 
and,f,L""7  "■'.'  i"""«.ual  ,a„i,^ 

a.«„.i„„„„,i..„i„„;'2-^,^^-. 

porting  with  our  monev-to  L       T 
worthv  nf  o  .,i»     •  '"""'^y— to  the  works 

cZ'chT'T'  ^°T  '^''  '^'  Catholic 
'-lurch    ,s    being    fashioned,    human  Iv 

peaking  by  that  silent  intelle'ctualwoi' 
bette-  °-       "°  ^  '^°"''^ 


not  be 


r,  too,  ,f  we  substituted  thoughtful 


114    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

literary  criticism  for  some  of  the  vapid 
stuff  which  chokes  the  columns  of  our 
Catholic  journals,  such  as  items  witrcss- 
ng  to  the  trills  of  Kathleen   O'Brien's 
voice  at  a  Knights  of  Columbus  smoker, 
or  that  Rear  Admiral  Peregrine  Mait- 
land,  of  the  British  fleet,  attended  mid- 
night Mass  on  Christmas  Day  in  Rome, 
or  that  a  set  of  vestments  was  presented  to 
the  Rev.  Timothy  O'Halloran,  curate  of 
Cahircivecn,  County  Kerry,  Ireland.    It 
strikes  me  as  a  valuator  of  things  that 
touch  us  nearly  and  arc  significant  in  our 
life  and  contribrte  to  our  intellectual  and 
moral  welfare  that  in  our  Catholic  jour- 
nalism we  would  do  well  to  give  more  at- 
tention to  what  is  really  informing,  more 
attention  to  the  creation  of  a  great,  strong 
Catholic  aristocracy  of  intellect,  capable 
of  sustaining  a  Catholic  literature  that 
will  reflect  truly  Catholic  lift,  art  and 
faith  in  this  New  World.    It  if  well,  in- 
deed, that    Kathleen    O'Brien    sings  so 
charmingly,  but  her   highest  and  most    p 


Essays  ON  Catholic  Life.     1,5 

graceful  notes  have  an  interest  only  for 
her  fan,,,    ,„d  .^^^^.^^^  y  for 

^ct   too    that  Rear  Admiral  Peregrine 
Maitland  attended  Christmas  MdSglt 
Mass  ,s  of  chiefest  interest  in  connectfon 
J.  h  the  ^e  fare  of  his  own  soul,  and  is  a 
flat  and  uninteresting  fact  of  no  value 
whatever  to  Patrick  Dwyer,  living  on  the 
fa   -way  banks  of  the  Mississippi  or  Sas- 
katchewan, while  9«  tn  fK-  »  . 
a  sef  nt  „  .Z:              *"*  presentation  of 
a  set  of  vestments  to  a  venerable  curate 
iT/-/"  *""r-'°"'^d  and  beloved  I 
S"fy"""^''^^'°^^''«CathoHc 

Sat^^frtXoTa'^irr"'^''^ 

s^intheCityof"T:rott!:To1 
San  Francsco.  Yet  our  Catholic  jourtl 

week  i^nr  T  ^''^'^'"^  °^  ^P^"^  ^h  "g 

m  nds  of  th  """'^  T'  ""^''^  '^'  Catholi? 

m  nds  of  their  readers  looking  for  some- 

hing  better  starve  because  of  the  lack  of 

tonic  thought.  ^  "* 

cuhl'"^'  I^*"^'"  °^  '^'  ^*«  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  get  critics  who  represent  a  partic- 


11 6    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

ular  school  of  thought  to  do  justice  to 
those  who  are  not  of  their  esoteric  circle. 
The  tendency  is  to  magnify  the  merits  of 
a  work  because  it  expresses  our  own  gos- 
pel of  thought.  And  this  is  equally  true 
in  the  political,  philosophical,  religious 
and  art  world.  We  need  not  in  criticism 
subscribe  to  a  man's  principles  or  tenets 
in  either  the  literary,  religious  or  art  or- 
der, and  yet  despite  this  we  should  be 
able  as  critics  to  do  absolute  justice  to  his 
work. 

The  greatest  mistake  that  the  Catholic 
critic  sometimes  makes  is  to  attack  and 
reduce  to  dust  everything  in  literature 
and  art  that  does  not  grow  out  of  Catholic 
faith.  We  all  know  that  the  schism  of 
the  sixteenth  century  in  England  dark- 
ened the  stream  of  English  literature  that 
overflowed  its  banks  and  filled  the  fields 
of  thought  with  the  seeds  of  false  philos- 
ophy from  which  have  blossomed  heresies 
in  life  and  literature  and  the  corrupting 
flowers  of  passion  in  the  soul.  But  Genius 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     117 

does  not  select  its  altar,  for  it  may  lure 
the  soul  of  a  Homer  or  Virgil  among  Pa- 
gan gods,  anoint  the  eyes  of  a  pantheistic 
Goethe  or  touch  with  fire  the  lips  of  a 
Catholic  Dante.     If  Chaucer  and  Pope 
were  Catholics,  Wordsworth  and  Tennv- 
son  wereAnglicans  and  Browning  a  Non- 
conformist.   We  cannot  as  Catholics  ac- 
cept entirely  the  philosophical  tenets  or 
teachings  in  the  poems  of  a  Wordsworth 
a  Tennyson,  or  a  Browning,  but  we  can 
admire  their  splendid  poetic  creations 
and  as  critics  give  them  a  just  and  worthy 
appraisement  as  great  artists  and  inspired 
stngers.  ^ 

It  is  true  that  all  great  art  should  min- 
ister to  truth,  for  it  is  at  the  altar  of  Cath- 
olic truth  that  it  lights  its  torch,  but  Na- 
ture, too,  has  a  temple,  and  the  lights 
upon  Its  altar  are  grateful  also  to  the  po- 
etic soul,  albeit  that  its  beauty  is  but  a  re- 
flection of  the  Divine  Beauty  which  is 
the  source  of  all  beauty  and  truth 


••  ^**' 


.1    :l 


ii8    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

Then  again  we  should  have  a  care  as  to 
the  fitness  of  the  critic  who  offers  us  his 
judgments.   The  man  with  poetic  endow- 
ment can  tell  us  most  and  best  about  po- 
etry, the  metaphysician  can  tell  us  most 
and  best  about  philosophy  and  the  con- 
clusions of  the  scientist  will  be  safest 
wJ^nin  the  domain  of  science.    In  truth, 
I  should  be  unwilling  to  accept  the  judg- 
ments of  a  philosopher  in  poetry,  or  the 
judgments  of  a  poet  in  philosophy.   That 
is  why  I  would  not  care  to  take  the  opin- 
ion of  even  the  great  Dr.  Brownson  in  a 
discussion  of  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth 
or  Emerson,  for  he  only  sees  and  values 
these  poets  as  thinkers,  but  poets  are  much 
more  than  thinkers.    They  are  thinkers, 
plus  the  artist  and  dreamer,  and  the  pur- 
ple of  their  dreams  is  much  finer  and 
more  glorious  than  the  subtle-woven  tap- 
estry of  their  thinking.    I  would  rather 
go  to  an  Aubrey  de  Vere  for  his  judg- 
ments on  the  poetic  work  of  Wordsworth, 
for  he  was  a  kindred  poetic  soul,  possess- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     119 

ing  in  abundance  the   precious   gift  of 
Catholic  faith. 

fh.^^^°^  '^*.  '"°'*  interesting  things  in 
the  history  of  criticism  is  the  contradic- 
tory character  of  the  judgments  that  have 
beendehveed.  Greene,  a  contemporary 
dramatist,  called  Shakespeare  "an  upstarl 
crow  beautified  with  our  feathers";  D 
Johnson  wrote   of   Milton's  "Lycidas"- 

tain  LhT"  "  ^u'^'  "^^  '^y"^''  ^^^"- 
tain  and  the  numbers  unpleasing"-  Hor 

ace  Walpole  compared  Dante  to  I  Meth- 
odist parson  in  Bedlam";   Byron   once 

Icata/^'^^";^""^"-''^"-^^^^^^^ 

acal  Calvinist  and  coddled  poet" ;  the  Ed- 

Ode  to  the  Daisy,"  that  it  was  "flat  and 

!lf  h  /'^^  M^'^  ^^^-..«m,  after  Car 
y      had  published  his  "French  Revo- 
iution      wrote  the  author  down   "as   a 
blockhead  and  strenuous  f  ailu  re  » 

divine  fire  of  genius  in  their  souls,  have 
been    meted    out   such    criticism-such 


120 


ESSAYS  ON  Catholic  Life. 


harsh  treatment,  the  young  writer  should 
take  courage  and  neither  wince  nor  lose 
heart  if  at  times  he  comes  under  the  lash, 
remembering  well  that  criticism  is  not  al- 
ways the  conscience  of  art. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


121 


THE  RELATION  OF  THE  CATHO- 

UC  SCHOOL  TO  CATHOUC 

UTERATURE 

[A  paper  read  before  the  American  Catholic  Educational 
Aiiociation,  Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  July,  1911.] 

When  the  invitation  was  extended  to 
me  by  the  Catholic  Educational  Associa- 
tion to  read  a  paper  on  "The  Relation  of 
the  Catholic  School  to  Catholic  Litera- 
ture," I  must  confess  that  I  readily  and 
eagerly  accepted  it,  feeling  that  it  is  a 
subject  fraught  with  the  very  deepest  im- 
port to  our  Catholic  life  and  progress. 

For  I  have  long  held  to  the  opinion 
that  we  Catholics  in  this  country  must  not 
only  create  and  sustain  our  own  Catholic 
educational  institutions,  but  we  must  also 
create  and  nourish  with  the  sunshine  and 
dews  of  sympathy  and  practical  support 
our  own  Catholic  literature;  and  the  best 
and  fittest  place— the  largest  soil  and  the 


'■■IS 


h, 


:i     3 


122    Essays  on  Catholic  I^ife. 

surest  of  production  for  this  literary  sow- 
ing is  unquestionably  the  Catholic  school. 
Here  every  Catholic  bent  of  the  child 
mind  makes  for  the  sturdiness  of  Catholic 
faith  in  after  years. 

If  life  is  a  warfare  of  the  soul,  how  can 
we  better  equip  our  boys  and  girls  for  this 
warfare  than  by  putting  in  their  hands 
the  weapons  of  Catholic  truth,  forged  and 
fashioned  by  our  great  Catholic  thinkers 
— our  great  Catholic  authors? 

Up  to  the  present  we  Catholics  have 
been  so  busy  with  our  material  tasks  in 
this  country— constructing  cities,  project- 
ing railroads,  clearing  forests,  developing 
mines,  that  literary  culture  with  us  has 
been  a  secondary  thought;  but  now  that 
these  worthy  and  gir-ntic  tasks  have  been 
well-nigh  accomplished,  may  we  not  turn 
aside  at  times  to  follow  with  Sir  Galahad 
the  "Gleam"  and  fashion  in  lofty  rhyme 
or  turret  bold  the  dreams  of  our  soul. 

And  if  this  noble  work  is  to  be  done,  if 
we  are  to  set  our  ideals  of  life  to  the  di- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     123 

vine  orchestration  of  heaven  and  make 
every  art  the  handmaid  of  God— an  aco- 
lyte at  His  altar,  we  must  begin  the  work 
and  sow  the  seed  in  the  humble,  but  be- 
neficent parochial  school. 

I  firmly  believe  that  to  a  great  extent 
we  have  neglected  this  phase  of  our  Cath- 
olic education  in  the  past— that  we  have 
forgotten  that  we  have  Catholic  writers 
who  are  toiling  and  have  toiled  in  the  lit- 
erary vineyard  of  God,  generously  giving 
of  their  gifts  to  advance  His  kingdom  and 
so  fill  our  hearts  and  homes  with  the  aro- 
ma and  beauty  of  Catholic  truth  and 
teaching. 

Look  around  you  today,  I  pray  you,  and 
see  what  the  influence  of  pernicious  and 
vicious  literature  is  doing  among  the 
youth  of  our  land.  How  can  we  Catho- 
lics, I  ask,  fold  our  arms  or  shut  our  eyes 
and  say  this  question  concerns  us  not?  It 
does  concern  us;  it  must  concern  us.  If 
there  is  unrest  today,  it  is  because  so- 
called  teachers  of  humanity  are  false  to 


U' 


'   'r 


^11 


t'^iiJMI 


124    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

the  great  truths  of  God.  Distrust  and 
discontent  and  a  false  doctrine  of  morals 
have  driven  out  of  the  hearts  of  the  peo- 
ple peace  and  the  wisdom  of  God;  and 
the  secular  press  and  the  teacher  from  his 
chair  in  the  secular  college  have  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  co-operated  in  bringing  about 
this  lamentable  condition  of  things. 

Because  of  these  influences  at  work  the 
literature  of  our  day  is  full  of  poison — 
full  of  false  principles.  Never  in  the  his- 
tory of  Christianity  has  the  evil  one  sown 
so  many  tares  among  the  wheat  of  truth. 
Not  alone  in  things  of  faith,  which  direct- 
ly concern  the  soul,  but  in  government 
economics,  social  life — in  every  phase  of 
human  activity  this  poison  has  entered 
and  vitiated  life  and  withered  and  de- 
stroyed as  with  a  killing  frost  its  crown- 
ing fruitage. 

But  how,  you  ask,  shall  we  Catholics 
meet  this  sad  condition  of  things?  It 
must  be  met  as  every  moral  evil  is  met 
with  the  sword  of  God's  truth,  and  this 


ig-f^tfl-iM 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     125 

must  be  wielded  early  in  the  Catholic 
school.   The  Catholic  Church  will  be  the 
Church  of  this  country  if  we  see  to  it  that 
the  faith  of  our  children  is  safeguarded  in 
their  early  school  days.     But  to  accom- 
plish this,  to  make  sure  that  their  early 
footsteps  in  learning  are  not  erring  foot- 
steps, we  must  see  to  it  that  our  children 
have  free  access  to  our  great  Catholic  au- 
thors, whose  works  stand  for  truth  and 
are  verily  an  inspiration  and  a  guide. 

We  know,  indeed,  that  the  stream  of 
English    literature    for    three    hundred 
years    has    been    darkened    somewhat— 
that  the  blind  philosophy  of  man  di- 
vorced from  God  and  His  divine  truth 
has  trickled  through  the  pages  01  even 
what  the  world  is  pleased  to  term  lit- 
erary masterpieces.     Men  in  their  pride 
have  forgotten  the  great  truth  so  beauti-  ' 
fully  expressed  by  Dr.  Maurice  Francis 
Egan  in  one  of  his  sonnets,  that  "Art  is 
true  art  when  art  to  God  is  true." 


h:A 


f 


126    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


And  so  we  Catholics  are  face  to  face 
with  the  problem:  What  shall  we  do  to 
counteract — to  neutralize  all  this?  There 
is  but  one  course  for  us — one  way,  and 
that  is  create  and  maintain  our  own  Cath- 
olic literature. 

We  sometimes  forget  the  literary  wealth 
we  have  in  our  household  and,  forgetting 
this,  we  do  little  or  nothing  in  our  Catho- 
lic schools  and  colleges  to  place  in  the 
hands  of  our  boys  and  girls  the  precious 
masterpieces  of  Catholic  literary  art  that 
are  epochal  in  the  significance  of  their 
truth  and  creation — mountain  tops  in  the 
great  continent  of  world  thought. 

We  wait  till  non-Catholic  scholars  and 
critics  proclaim  Catholic  Dante  the  great- 
est epic  poet  of  all  times  before  we  erect 
a  literary  shrine  to  the  sad  Florentine 
singer  in  our  homes;  we  are  flattered 
when  a  Dr.  Dawson  declares  Newman's 
"Dream  of  Gerontius"  the  most  subtle 
spiritual  poem  since  the  "Divine  Come- 
dy" was  given  to  the  world,  yet  we  hesi- 


->Shai<iMtaalB 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     127 

tatc  to  make  these  appraisements  our- 
selves-to  g.ve  out  these  judgments  to  the 

Surely  then,  it  is  time  that  we  Catho- 

we  should  fully  realize  the  duty  that  is 
ours     But,  mark  you,  I  am  not  pleading 
here  for  the  galvanizing  of  Catholic  liter 
fry  mediocrity  into  greatness  or  popular- 
ity either  in  our  schools  or  out  of  them 
I  realize  that  we  Catholics  must  enter  the 
great  temple  of  literature  by  a  front  door. 
No  side  door  for  us.     It  is  because  of  this 
that  I  would  early  introduce  in  our  Cath- 
olic schools  the  names   of  our  leading 
Catholic  authors.  In  fine,  not  only  would 
I  have  our  boys  and  girls  study  these  au- 
thors but,  taking  a  leaf  out  of  the  public 
school  program,  I  would  institute  in  our 
Catholic    parochial    schools    and    high 
?abbD:^"r7'P^''''"^°«y'^F«thi 

O  Reilly  Day,  a  Canon  Sheehan  Day,  a 
Cardinal  Newman  Day,  a  Maurice  Fr^- 


-.1 


'XI 


i*-'U5 


128    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


cis  Egan  Day,  an  Agnes  Repplicr  Day,  a 
Brother  Azarias  Day,  a  Dr.Gilmary  Shea 
Day,  to  be  devoted  entirely  to  the  works  of 
these  authors.  Truth  is,  we  have  a  credit- 
able Catholic  literature,  but  know  it  not. 
We  have  no  need  whatever  in  our  studies 
and  reading  to  follow  false  lights  while 
the  torch  of  God's  truth  is  borne  aloft  by 
so  many  gifted  writers  of  the  household  of 
our  faith,  sheddding  its  constant  and  cer- 
tain rays  across  our  path,  directing  our 
footsteps  and  lighting  our  way. 

Furthermore,  I  am  sure  you  realize 
with  me  that  in  the  Catholic  school  we 
must  seek  to  cultivate  a  taste  for  clean  and 
wholesome  literature  that  will  make  for 
soul  growth  and  the  upbuilding  of  char- 
acter if  we  would  indeed  have  our  boys 
and  girls  develop  and  become  under  the 
shadow  of  God's  hand  worthy  members 
of  Holy  Church  and  worthy  citizens  of 
this  great  country. 

It  is  true,  we  must  not  forget  that  our 
schools  are  voluntary— that  they  live  and 
flourish  through  the  generosity  of  ourpeo- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     129 

pie  Nothing,  to  my  mind,  in  the  history 
of  the  Catholic  Church  of  America  testi- 
fies so  strongly  to  the  practical  faith  of 
our  people  as  the  fact  that  they  have  gen- 
erously given  of  their  means  to  build  and 
support  these  Catholic  schools,  and  what 
IS  still  better,  have  given  without  a  mur- 
mur. 

Now  a  people  who  have  done  this  can, 
if  roused  to  a  realization  of  the  need  of 
It,  build  up  and  sustain  a  Catholic  litera- 
ture.  Just  fancy  what  we  could  do  in  this 
direction  if  every  Catholic  school  in  our 
country  were  to  make  it  its  very  mission 
to  promote  and  advance  the  study  of  our 
Catholic   authors.     I  do  not  know  how 
many  Catholic  boys  and  girls  are  in  at- 
tendance at  our  parochial  and  Catholic 
hign  schools  in  this  country,  but  I  am 
confident  that  the  number  is  so  great  that 
were  their  minds  directed  to  a  purpose 
they  could  render  popular  any  worthy 
Catholic  author  whose  work  they  might 
take  up  for  reading  and  study. 


I30    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

Let  me  ask  just  here,  by  the  way,  how 
many  of  our  Catholic  schools  possess  a  li- 
brary of  Catholic  authors?  How  many 
possess  five  hundred  books?  How  many 
possess  even  one  hundred?  I  sometimes 
think  it  would  bewell  if  some  of  us  would 
at  times  make  an  examination  of  our  edu- 
cational conscience.  We  would  learn  as 
Catholic  educators  that  we  are  not  doing 
our  whole  duty  unless  we  are  cultivating 
in  the  minds  of  those  entrusted  to  us  a 
taste  for  what  is  strongest  and  best  in 
Catholic  literature — a  desire,  so  to  speak, 
to  vitalize  our  faith  with  the  tonic  thought 
of  robust  Catholicity  so  that  our  Catholic 
manhood  and  our  Catholic  womanhood 
may  be  prepared  for  any  crisis  that  may 
confront  us  amid  the  constant  upheavals 
of  life. 

I  think,  therefore,  I  am  not  asking  or 
presuming  too  much  when  I  invite  all  our 
Catholic  teachers,  both  lay  and  religious, 
to  co-operate  in  this  project  of  dissemi- 
nating Catholic  literature  through  the 


vtm 


Essays  on  Catjjoi.ic  Life.     131 

medium  of  our  Cathol  c  srhools   The  his- 
tOY  of  the  foundation  and  development 
of  the  Catholic  school  in  America  is  one 
of  the  noblest  pages  in  the  volume  of  our 
Catholic  activities;  for  it  is  a  record  of 
sacrifice,  of  faith,  of  generous  offering 
Let  us  make  this  history  still  more  beauti- 
ful ;  let  us  star  its  pages  with  new  sacrifice 
new  faith,  by  our  united  endeavor  to  set  on 
foot  a  plan,  a  project  which  will  place  in 
our  Catholic  schools  the  best  there  is  in 
Catholic  literature,  that  it  may  prove  a 
literary  sacrament  of  grace  to  our  chil- 
dren, and  our  children's  children,  as  they 
grow  and  wax  strong  in  a  knowledge  of 
the  things  of  God. 

Let  provision  then  be  made  in  every 
school  for  a  goodly  collection  of  Catholic 
books— in  history,  in  fiction,  in  poetry,  in 
criticism,  in  art;  and  let  our  interest  in 
this  be  at  all  times  greater  than  our  inter- 
est in  commencement  displays.  Nor  need 
we  limit  our  books  to  Catholic  authors 
alone.    Many  non-Catholic  authors,  in- 


132    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


f.J 


spired  by  Catholic  truth,  have  lavishly 
poured  out  for  us  the  wealth  of  their 
minds  in  literary  streams  clear  and  sweet 
and  strong.  But  my  purpose  in  appear- 
ing before  you  here  today  is  to  plead  for  a 
worthy  recognition  of  our  Catholic  writ- 
ers in  our  Catholic  schools,  that  our  Cath- 
olic children  may  not  grow  up  ignorant 
of  the  great  Catholic  truths  that  have  in- 
spired the  Singer,  the  Builder  and  the 
Doer. 

I  see  no  reason,  too, why  in  our  Catholic 
schools  we  should  not  hold  to  the  old  idea 
of  awarding  prizes  to  those  who  excel  in 
their  studies.  It  would  prove  an  excel- 
lent means  of  presenting  to  the  brightest 
of  our  Catholic  boys  and  girls  copies  of 
our  best  Catholic  works,  so  that  in  stim- 
ulating Catholic  education  we  would 
thereby  also  be  stimulating  Catholic  lit- 
erature. 

You  may  reply  to  all  this  and  say  Cath- 
olic literary  work  of  our  day  is  mediocre. 
Well,  my  answer  to  this  must  be  in  the 


iiem^siM- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     133 

words  of  the  Frenchman  who,  when  an 
Englishman  once  declared  that  Lamar- 
tme  IS  not  a  great  poet,  replied  with  pride 
and  patriotism:  "He  is  great  tousFrench- 
nien        So  we  Catholics  can  well  say 
Catholic  literature  is  great  to  us  Catho- 
lics, for  It  is  an  expression  of  Catholic  life 
and  Catholic  truth,  even  though  the  world 
-which  is  often  wrong  in  its  appraise- 
ments-crown not  its  brows  with  laurel 
bays. 

May  I  then  enjoin  upon  you  Catholic 
teachers  here  assembled  to  give  some 
thought  to  my  suggestions  in  this  paper 
that  we  Catholics,  whether  in  the  school- 
room or  out  of  it,  may  contribute  a  share 
to  the  great  work  of  creating  and  sustain- 
ing a  Catholic  literature— a  Catholic  lit- 
erature that  will  verily  reflect  a  pure  and 
unsullied  knighthood  of  deeds  worthy  of 
Round  Table,  whose  Sir  Galahad 


making  quest  of  a  Holy  Grail— a 
of  faith  shall  lead  us  till  : 


4,i 

•i 


prize 


134    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


"The  doudi  are  broken  in  the  tkjr, 
And  through  the  mountain-walli 
A  rolling  organ-harmony, 

Swells  up  and  tinki  and  falli. 
Then  move  the  t^ee^  the  corpies  nod, 
Wings  flutter,  voices  hover  clear: 
'O  just  and  faithful  Knight  of  God, 
Ride  on  I    The  priie  is  near."  " 


'  i 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


135 


CATHOUC  INTELLECTUAL 
ACTIVITIES 

There  is,  perhaps,  nothing  that  our 
Catholic  people  in  America  need  more 
today  than  a  great  intellectual  awakening. 
It  is  because  of  the  dormant  character  of 
the  Catholic  mind  in  this  country  that 
we  have  not  as  yet  in  America  anything 
that  might   be   called  a  great,  distinct 
and    worthy    Catholic    literature.    We 
have  increased  in  members,  given  of  our 
means  generously   to  build  temples   to 
God,  and  we  arc  not  without  fair  repre- 
sentation in  the  councils  and  government 
of  the  nation;  but  it  must  be  confessed 
that  our  place  in  the  intellectual  world— 
our  share  in  its  activities  is  far  from  be- 
ing satisfactory. 

Of  course,  we  must  not  expect  too  much 
from  our  Catholic  people,  who  as  yet 
have  little  leisure  or  disposition  for  aught 
save  what  concerns  their  daily  bread. 


u 


J- 


f-tf 


136    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

But  we  are  justified  in  looking  to  them  to 
keep  pate  with  the  intellectual  progress 
of  our  time  if  we  Catholics  would  take 
our  place  as  creators  of  ideals  and  spirit- 
ual benefactors  of  mankind.  We  have 
truly  our  work  assigned  to  us,  and  as  stew- 
ards we  must  perform  it  for  our  Divine 
Master. 

For  the  great  question  that  will  not 
down  is :  What  are  we  doing  for  the  light 
of  faith  through  the  means  of  our  indi- 
vidual gifts?  Are  we  satisfied  with  our 
personal  ambition  to  serve  Caesar  and 
wear  his  purple  of  reward,  or  do  we  give 
the  higher  things  of  mind  and  soul  a  fit- 
ting place  in  our  world  of  thought?  Sure- 
ly we  should  have  a  share,  as  Catholics, 
in  all  that  makes  for  intellectual  advance- 
ment and  in  the  pursuit  of  the  highest 
aims  that  stir  the  heart  and  soul  of  the 
nation. 

In  the  discussion  of  our  Catholic  intel- 
lectual activities  in  this  paper  we  must 
perforce  limit  ourselves  to  certain  phases 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     137 

of  the  subject  in  order  that  the  spirit  and 
purpose  of  it  may  be  the  better  under- 
stood Catholic  intellectual  activity  is  a 
very  broad  and  general  term,  and  we  must 
confine  ,t  here  to  certain  spheres  of  action 
where  we  can  best  trace  and  assess  its 
value  and  worth. 

Perhaps  the  most  promising  expression 
of  Catholic  intellectual  life  today  is  to  be 
found  in  the  marked  progress  seen  in  the 
character  of  the  work  now  being  done  in 
many  of  our  Catholic  colleges.    Thanks 
to  the  organization  a  few  years  ago  of  an 
American  Catholic  Educational  Associa- 
tion and  to  the  high  ideals  and  ripe  and 
sound   scholarship   which   the   Catholic 
University  of  Washington  stands  for,  our 
t^^atholic  colleges  have  awakened  to  a  re- 
alization of  our  intellectual  needs,  and  a 
tonic  current  has  thereby  passed  thro-.igh 
our     Catholic     Body     Educational     in 
America ;  and  within  a  few  years  we  may 
hope  to  have  built  up  a  system  of  Catho- 
lic schools  and  colleges  in  this  country 


138    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

a  credit  to  our  Catholic  people  and  a 
credit  to  the  nation. 

But  what  we  want  today  is,  rather, 
stronger  Catholic  schools  than  a  multiple 
of  them.  Better  far  five  great  colleges, 
with  strong  and  able  faculties,  than  twen- 
ty- scholastic  weaklings  grinding  out  grad- 
uates poorly  equipped  for  the  battle  of 
life  and  representing  feebly  the  massive 
strength  of  Catholic  thought  and  train- 
ing. 

We  should  remember,  too,  that  in  over- 
confidence  we  may  underestimate  the 
work  of  the  secular  institutions  of  learn- 
ing. Nothing  can  be  so  fatal  to  our  work 
as  an  overweening  confidence  in  our  own 
particular  program  of  labor.  It  is  wisdom 
at  all  times  to  learn  from  those  who  are 
not  of  our  household— provided  they 
have,  indeed,  something  good  to  give  us. 
Humility  is  the  very  groundwork  of  all 
knowledge,  as  it  is  the  pillar  and  basis  of 
strong  faith. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     139 

Let  convents,  then,  remember  that  they 
are  graduating  the  future  mothers  who 
will  make  our  Catholic  homes  and  give 
moral  impress  to  the  children  of  these 
homes,  and  that  moral  strength  of  charac- 
ter and  the  highest  Catholic  intelligence 
are  of  much  more  worth  in  a  girl  than  the 
best  of  manicuring  or  the  latest  acquire- 
ment in  drawing-room  deportment.    Let 
these  Catholic  academies  for  the  educa- 
tion of  girls  keep  in  mind  also  that  thev 
are  scarcely  doing  their  duty  if  they  fail 
to  impress  upon  their  graduates  the  need 
of  sharing  their  knowledge  in  after  years 
with  the  world  around  them,  and  plant- 
ing in  every  Catholic  home  the  fruitful 
seeds  of  wise  counsel  which  their  good 
and  pious  teachers  have  generously  sown 
in  their  minds    during   their   academic 
years.    Indeed,  we  often  wonder  what  be- 
comes in   after  years   of  the  bevies  of 
fledged  graduates  who  garland  the  acad- 
emy stages  on  recurrent  commencement 
days.    Surely  the  seed  sown  should  bear 


11 


I40    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

some  fruit  other  than  tht  flowers  of  ma- 
ternal duty  which  bless  and  sanctify  the 
home,  however  fragrant  and  full  of  beau- 
ty these  may  be;  for  the  activities  of  a 
Catholic  woman  should  reach  out  into  the 
world  around  her.  She  should  be  a  cor- 
rector of  false  ideals  in  the  moral,  social 
and  literary  world,  and  not  the  plaything 
of  fashion. 

Granted  that  the  convent  has  given  her 
the  right  conception  of  duty  as  well  as 
the  right  attitude  towards  life,  she  is  not 
doing  her  full  duty  as  a  Catholic  woman 
if  she  does  not,  as  an  apostle  of  virtue  and 
goodness,  kindle  in  the  hearts  of  others 
the  flame  of  divine  truth  which  has  made 
her  own  soal  strong  and  beauteous. 

And  the  question  arises  here:  Are 
Catholic  young  men  and  women  reaching 
out  intellectually  into  the  world  around 
them?  Is  it  not  true  that  in  many  quar- 
ters there  is  intellectual  stagnation  among 
Catholics?  Why,  there  are  cities  in  this 
land  which  contain  from  a  quarter  of  a 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     141 

million   to  a  half  a  million   Catholics 
where  not  one  Catholic  club  can  be  found 
doing  serious  intellectual  work.    Is  it  any 
wonder  then,  that  Catholic  literature  is 
languishing?  Yet  these  same  young  Cath- 
olic people-many  of  them  college  and 
academy  graduates-are  quite  alert  in  the 
social  world.    When  Columbus  Landing 
Day  IS  at  hand  they  readily  answer  to  the 
roll-call  and  willingly  squander  time  and 
money  to  play  the  role  of  Isabella  or  Fer- 
dinand or  Columbus   in    the   richest  of 
royal  costumes,  though  they  are  not  cer- 
tain as  to  how  many  voyages  the  Genoese 
mariner  made  to  America,  or  the  condi- 
tions and  circumstances  which  made  pos- 
sible his    discovery  of  America.     It  is 
easier  to  wear  the  costume  and  greet  the 
eye  photographed  in  the  paper  next  morn- 

Zktnt  "  '  "  '°  ""^  "^''"^  ^"^ 

I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  a  part  of 

this  vanity  and  frivolousness  is  cultivated 

'n  our  schools.     Even  they  sometimes  are 


i 


142    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

not  free  from  the  dangerous  microbes  of 
fads.  In  an  age  when  novelty  makes 
greater  appeal  than  normal,  well-poised 
truth,  it  would  be  a  miracle  if  some  of  our 
Catholic  schools  did  not  suffer  from  the 
malady  of  the  age. 

Rev.  Dr.  Ryan,  of  the  Catholic  Uni- 
versity of  America,  eminent  as  a  student 
of  sociology,  has  been  recently  credited  by 
the  Catholic  press  with  giving  Catholics 
some  sound  advice.     This  wise  thinker 
and   scholar  counsels   Catholics  to  join 
clubs  and  societies  in  the  world  that  are 
seeking  to  better  the  condition  of  human- 
ity, thereby  giving  these  clubs  and  socie- 
ties the  aid  of  their  Catholic  thought  and 
wisdom;  and  he  assures  Catholics  that 
they  are  certain  to  receive  fair  treatment 
and  representation  from  the  members  of 
these  clubs  and  societies. 

This  recalls  the  fact  that  a  certain  class 
of  Catholics — often  not  very  intellectual 
— are  continually  charging  our  public  li- 
braries with  neglect  of  purchasing  Cath- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     143 

olic  books.     This  is  almost  entirely  the 
fault  of  the  Catholics  themselv  s     Jfo„ 

about^Car  r  '  K  "r  '"'y  "°'  '^"^  -"" 
about  Catholic  books,  but  if  attention  be 

called  0  some  good  Catholic  work  it  will 
orthwuh  be  placed  on  the  shelves  of"h 
ran.^    But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  it    o 

if  Buff./"  o '^  ^,''^'''  ''■''^"'"  «  those 
of  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Detroit,  etc    the 

ot  worth  and  value  is  really  good?    Is  it 

CatLr"  '  ^  Public  libraries  that  our 
catnol,  .  -..  as  a  whole,  are  not  a 
reading  people.  Let  us  not  then  en! 
W  to  Shift  the  blame  to  the  Should:; 

Again,  one  cannot  well  blame  public 
ibranes  because  they  do  not  purchase 

ome  of  our  Catholic  books,  since'som': 
them  are  not  literature.    Catholic  editors 

Call    K  T"  "^'^  ""'^^  *^«^  "«™c  o 
Catholic  books  they  sometimes  receive  for 


144    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

review  literary  gasping  weaklings  that 
should  have  suffered  pre-natal  death.  We 
need  better  than  these  for  the  Catholic 
intellect  if  it  would  be  virile  and  worthy 
of  our  faith.  It  is  one  thing  to  cultivate 
and  nurture  Catholic  literature  and  quite 
another  thing  to  galvanize  mediocrity  in- 
to greatness. 

Yes,  truly,  as  a  body  we  need  a  great 
Catholic  intellectual  awakening.    On  the 
social  side,  we  are  veritable  giants.    No 
doubt  about  that.     Many  of  us  know  the 
latest  dance  step  who  are  not  familiar 
with  the  latest  phase  of  thought,  economic 
or  literary.    We  have  clubs  and  societies 
that  have  not  a  single  intellectual  note  in 
their  make-up,  which   serve   the  vapid 
vanity  of  society  climbers   and  not  the 
building  up  of  a  Catholic  aristocracy  of 
intellect.  The  result  of  this  vain  and  friv- 
olous occupation  is  little  disposition  or 
taste  for  the  higher  things  of  the  soul 


irishing  the  mind 
with 'good  reading  and  entertaining  the 


Many  who  should  be  noui 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     145 

great  princes  of  thought,  are  dissipating 
the  hours,  squandering  the  gold  of  God's 
time  in  foolish  pastime,  which  adds  noth- 
ing to  their  strength,  either  physically, 
mentally  or  spiritually. 

But  it  will  be  said  Catholics  must  have 
social  life.  Decidedly  so.  But  the  Cath- 
olic intellect  should  not  be  made  to  bow 
down  to  it  as  to.a  golden  calf. 

We  American  Catholics  have  a  differ- 
ent world  to  envisage  from  that  which  ob- 
tains in  Europe     The  joy  and  optimism 
of  life  IS  found  here  in  action-in  strenu- 
ous intellectual  toil-in  the  conquest  of 
difficulties;  while  in  the  Old  World  it 
13  a   thing  apart  from   labor— it  is   a 
surrender  of  the  soul  to  the  imperious 
exactions    of    the    light-hearted    leisure 
which  re.gns  everywhere.    Our  forefath- 

IITH  T  ?"'!  '^l^'  '"  ^^y  °"  ^he  hill- 
sides of  Ireland,  but  if  their  exiled  chil- 
dren pursue  the  same  joyous  pleasures  in 
this  land  of  strenuous  action  and  hard 
10 


146    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

competition  they  will  remain  forever  the 
hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water. 

About  twenty  years  ago  a  Catholic 
young  man,  the  late  Warren  E.  Mosher, 
the.  real  founder  of  the  Catholic  Summer 
Schools  of  America,  undertook,  through 
the  medium  of  his  Catholic  Reading  Cir- 
cle Review,  later   known  as   Masher's 
Magazine  and  The  Champlain  Educator, 
to  establish  and  build  up  among  our  Cath- 
olic young  people  a  series  of  Reading  Cir- 
cles that  would  develop  among  Catholics 
a  taste  for  the  best  in  Catholic  literature 
and  art,  and  so  give  our  Catholic  young 
people  a  place  among  the  scholars  and 
serious  intellectuals  of  our  country.    Mr. 
Mosher's  was  a  noble  and  praiseworthy 
apostleship,  and  if  ever  a  Catholic  lay- 
man has  deserved  a  monument  to  be  erect- 
ed to  his  memory  by  his  fellow-Catholic 
countrymen    the    noble,    self-sacrificing 
Warren  E.  Mosher  has  merited  such  me- 
morial tribute  and  honor. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.    147 

Ja'  T'/""'  ""*^"  Mr.  Mosher's 
guiding  hand  and  inspiration,  these  Cath- 
olic Reading  Circles  flourished.  Indeed, 
there  was  for  a  time  a  Catholic  Reading 
Renaissance.  Therewas  in  the  movement 
too  sonie  hope  for  Catholic  literature,  fo^ 

of  rli  r'?''"'''''"  ""**=df°^  the  study 
of  Catholic  literature  and  art  it  was  fond- 
ly hoped  that  gifted  Catholic  writers  of 
our  own  country  would  receive  such  prac- 
tical appreciation  as  would  lead  to  the 
very  best  literary  results. 

It  seems,  however,  today  that  the  great- 
er number  of  these  Catholic   Reading 
Clubs  or  Circles  have  ceased  their  work 
In  the  larger  centers,  it  is  true,  some  of 
them  still  exist;  but  the  hopeful  outlook 

cJhW    T  y""  *«°>  ^^'^  these 
Catholic  Reading  Clubs  were  springing 
up  in  even;  large  parish,  has  become  dim 
med  and  shorn  of  its  splendid  promise. 

to  get  the  mind  of  our  Catholic  young 
people  to  realize  the  need  of  intellectual 


il 


148    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

growth   outside   of   their  school    days. 
Many   are   simply   indifferent,    carried 
away  by  the  whirl  of  social  life.    In  a  cer- 
tain Canadian  city  which  contains  some 
fifty  thousand  Catholics,  a  very  able  and 
scholarly  priest  had  advertised,  not  long 
since,  a  series  of  evening  lectures  on  phil- 
os  ^  phy  for  Catholic  young  people.    Five 
or  six  constituted  the  audience.    Where 
were  all  the  young  Catholics?  In  billiard 
rooms,  chattering  drawing  rooms  or  dance 
halls.    That  same  evening  a  Browning 
Club  conducted  by  the  only  Unitarian 
Church  in  the  city  had  eighty  or  one  hun- 
dred earnest  young  men  and  women  dis- 
cussing the  meaning  and  philosophy  of 
this  enigmatic  poet  of  England.    Such  in- 
dications show  why  we  have  as  yet  no 
Catholic  literature  in  this  country. 

In  discussing  Catholic  intellectual  ac- 
tivities we  should  not  forget  that  splendid 
movement  which  had  birth  some  twenty 
years  ago,  known  as  the  Catholic  Summer 
School.    It  has  done  much  and  is  doing 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.    149 

a  few  con  '  P'°P'*'-  ^^«^""'"8  ^''h 
?>.Z.  ["!'"  ^'^^"^  ^y  distinguished 
Catholic  scholars  and  authors  in  New 
London,  Conn,  in  the  summer  of  1892 
t  has  establ  shed  a  permanent  home  upon 
the  shores  of  beauteous  Lake  Champkin 

otnh'  't'^"'^"^  ''  ^^^^'«  "P°n  phi?-' 
osophy,  history,  literature  and  art  cover 
some  ten  weeks  and  are  often  so  pregnin 
with  thought  and  scholarship   and  the 
thT(^^rH^''"^l^^^''^^<='™^.tha 
the  Chff  Haven  Catholic  Summer  School 
course  may  be  now  well  regarded  as  grad- 
uate studies  m  the  curriculum  of  our  best 
universities.  ' 

Let  us  say  in  conclusion  that  it  is  clear- 
ly  evident  that  the  intellectual  standing  of 
Catholics  in  this  country  is  of  their  own 

cut^f  •  ^"If'!'    '^P*="^"y    Catholic 

crumi/K'  'ut'^'  P°^"'  ^  g^"t  ful- 
crum with  which  to  more  the  masses  and 

ecure  for  those  who  possess  it  the  advan- 
tages and  birthrights  of  a  people.    It  i, 


'it. 


I50    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 

not  as  Matthew  Arnold  would  have  it,  an 
altar  for  worship,  but  it  makes  the  face 
of  Catholic  truth  more  beautiful  and  links 
the  soul  more  closely  to  the  wisdom  of 
God.  The  Catholics  of  this  country  are 
reaching  out  for  this  culture,  and  he  is 
truly  an  apostle  of  Catholic  life  and  faith 
who  aids  them  to  realize  and  attain  it. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


151 


THE  CATHOLIC  ELEMENT  IN 
ENGUSH  POETRY 

The  subject  of  the  Catholic  element  in 
English  poetry  is,  indeed,  a  vast  and  ex- 
tended one.    It  involves  an  investigation 
as  to  how  far  Catholic  truth  has  pervaded 
the  great  body  of  English  poetry  from  the 
days  of  Chaucer  to  our  own.    It  will  be 
found,  too,  that  many  English  poets,  while 
not  professing  the  Catholic  faith,  have  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  been  inspired  by  its 
teachings  and  guided  by  its  sane  and  loftv 
tenets.    Because  a  great  and  true  poet,  no 
matter  at  what  altar  he  may  kneel,  works 
towards  the  ideal  of  Catholic  truth.    For 
all  great  Christian  poetry  is  but  the  flow- 
ering of  Catholic  truth. 

The  schism  of  the  sixteenth  century 
darkened  the  stream  of  English  literature, 
bu  :  did  not  entirely  cut  off  the  vision  of 
the  poet  from  that  eternal  beauty  whose 
abode  is  the  bosom  of  God.     Glints  of 


152    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


Catholic  truth,  then,  will  be  found  run- 
ning through  all  English  poetry. 

Aristotle  says  that  all  great  poetry  has  a 
philosophy.  Y^s,  ana  poetry,  being  one 
of  the  greatest  of  the  arts,  stands  also  for 
an  ideal.  This  ideal  embodies  the  soul  of 
the  people,  whether  that  people  be  Ori- 
ental, Greek,  Roman,  mediaeval  or  mod- 
ern. To  understand  a  poem  properly  we 
must  re-create  it  in  the  times  and  under 
the  skies  which  yielded  their  nurturing 
dews.  How  can  we  expect  to  understand 
Aristophanes  if  we  do  not  know  Greek 
life,  or  Horace  if  we  do  not  know  Roman 
life,  or  yet  Dante  if  we  have  not  studied 
mediaeval  life?  To  know  the  times  is  to 
re-create  the  poem. 

Every  race  or  people,  then,  stand  for  an 
ideal.  In  the  East  it  was  fatalism,  in 
Greece  it  was  beauty,  in  Rome  under  the 
Caesars  it  was  the  majesty  of  law.  Today 
in  German  literature  the  dominant  note  is 
the  philosophical,  in  English  literature  it 
is  individualism,  in  French  literature  it  is 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.    153 

the  social  in  Italian  the  artistic,  and  in 
Spanish  the  chivalric. 

In  ancient  Pagan  days  all  art  minis- 
tered to  the  senses,  but  the  primary  pur- 
pose  of  Christian  art  is  to  minister  to  the 
soul.    With  the  adrent  of  Christ  a  new 
meaning  was  breathed  into  art.    It  took 
ten  silent  centuries"  to  give  the  world  a 
Dante,  the  first  great  poetic  flower  nur- 
tured in  the  gardens  of  Catholic  truth    It 
took  as  many  centuries   to  give  us   the 
"Summa"  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas.    All 
art  IS  a  centuiy  plant,  with  its  roots  deep 
in  the  past.    What  are  the  "Canterbury 
Tales    but  a  reflection  of  medieval  Engl 

M  f  "^^'"'^  ^'^  C^^holic.     Nothing 
could  be  so  absurd  as  to  doubt  the  Catho 
^city  of  Chaucer.    The  late  distinguished 
Chaucerian  scholar.  Professor  Lounsbur^: 
of  Yale  University,  settled  forever  this 

and  Dante  puts  a  Pope  in  hell.   Notwith 
standing  this,  both  are  orthodox  Catho- 


154    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


'1' 


lies.  Chaucer  belonged  to  a  rival  order 
of  the  monks,  the  military  order,  and  the 
Ghibbeline  Dante  makes  his  damned  talk 
politics  in  hell.  Surely,  this  sufficiently 
explains  the  reason  for  the  attitude  of  these 
two  poets.  Both  Dante  and  Chaucer  died 
in  the  bosom  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

To  understand  fully  what  part  Catho- 
lic truth  has  played  in  English  poetry  we 
must  realize  that  it  has  been  from  the  al- 
tar of  Catholic  truth  that  the  spiritual 
torch  of  poetry  has  gone  forth  and  been 
handed  down  the  centuries.  From  Chau- 
cer across  those  twilight  years  when  Eng- 
land was  more  concerned  in  the  affairs  of 
war  than  in  the  arts  of  peace  to  Spenser, 
and  from  Spenser  to  that  myriad-minded 
dramatist,  William  Shakespeare,  whose 
mind  has  been  likened  to  an  ocean  whose 
waves  touched  .11  the  shores  of  human 
thought,  and  upon  whose  bosom  played 
all  the  sunshine  and  tempest  of  passion; 
and  from  Shakespeare  to  that  chief  of 
English  epic  writers,  who  trod  the  heav- 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     155 

ens  shod  in  the  rainbow  light  of  epic 
glory,  John  Milton,  and  from  Milton 
across  the  dry  Popeian  period  to  that 
high  priest  of  nature,  William  Words- 
worth, whose  altar  lamp  had  burned  un- 
heeded during  the  reign  of  the  correct 
school  of  poets,  and  from  Wordsworth 
down  to  the  poets  who  seemed  to  have 
passed  away  but  yesterday— to  Rosetti 
and  Tennyson  and  Browning. 

It  is  worthy  of  noting  that  the  value  of 
art  depends  upon  the  spiritual  endow- 
ment of  its  age  or  epoch.  It  is  the  Olym- 
pian and  pantheistic  Goethe  who  tells  us 
that  "The  epochs  in  which  faith  prevails 
are  the  marked  epochs  of  human  history, 
full  of  heart-stirring  memories  and  sub- 
stantial gains  for  all  after  times.  The 
epochs  in  which  unbelief  prevails,  even 
v/hen  for  the  moment  they  have  put  on 
the  semblance  of  glory  and  success,  inev- 
itably sink  into  insignificance  in  the  eyes 
of  posterity,   which  will  not  waste  its 


156    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


I! 


nfc 


thoughts  on  things  barren  and  untruth- 
ful." 

If  we  take,  for  instance,  the  three  peri- 
ods in  literature  represented  by  Dante, 
Spenser  and  Shelley — that  is,  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  English  Renaissance  and  the 
Age  of  Revolution — it  will  be  seen  at  a 
glance  that  the  time  of  Dante,  which  is 
known  as  the  Ages  of  Faith,  is  because  of 
its  great  spiritual  endowment  the  greatest 
art  epoch  of  the  three.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  representative  poems  of  these  three 
periods— "The  Divine  Comedy,"  "The 
Fairie  Queene"  and  "Prometheus  Un- 
bound." As  Miss  Vida  Scudder  points 
out  In  her  scholarly  work,  "The  Life  of 
the  Spirit  in  the  Modern  English  Poets," 
when  you  compare  the  representative 
works  of  these  three  poets,  there  is  no 
doubting  which  is  the  greatest  age  and 
which  is  the  greatest  poem.  "The  Divine 
Comedy"  was  completed  in  1321,  the 
"Fairie  Queene"  in  1596  and  "Prome- 
theus Unbound"  in  1819.     The  age  of 


1 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     157 

Dante  was  an  age  of  contemplation,  the 
age  of  Spenser  an  age  of  adventure,  and 
the  age  of  Shelley  an  age  of  revolution. 
The  problems  in  these  three  poems  reflect 
the  spirit  of  the  times.    With  Dante  the 
problem  is  the  purification  of  the  soul; 
with  Spenser,  the  routing  of  the  powers 
of  wrong,  and  with  Shelley,  the  liberation 
of  the  soul.     Miss  Scudder  sums  up  her 
estimate  of  the  two  protagonists  in  "Pro- 
metheus   Unbound"  and   "The    Divine 
Comedy"  in  these  words  "Prometheus  is 
an  abstraction,  Dante  is  a  summary.    Pro- 
metheus is  a  man  as  dreamed  by  a  poet, 
Dante  is  a  man  as  created  by  God.    And 
the  thought  of  God  proves  the  greater." 
It  will  thus  be  seen  that  poetry  is  never 
greater  than  the  spiritual  endowment  of 
the  age  in  which  it  takes  form.    In  truth, 
it  derives  its  very  accent  from  this  spirit- 
ual endowment. 

All  art  reflects  the  times  in  which  it  has 
birth,  but  it  draws  its  nourishment  from 
the  past.     Its  roots  strike  deeply  down. 


158     Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


Take,  for  instance,  Shakespeare.  While 
he  belongs  to  the  Elizabethan  age  of  lit- 
erature, his  genius  has  been  fed  and  en- 
riched by  the  centuries  of  Catholic  faith 
in  England,  when  men's  souls  joyed  in  the 
things  of  God,  when  the  shrine  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  stood  by  the  wayside  and 
the  mystery  and  morality  plays  of  Chester 
and  York  touched  and  stirred  men's  souls. 
Yet  it  is  very  doubtful  if  there  is  any 
satisfactory  evidence  that  Shakespeare 
was  in  any  way  attached  to  the  Catholic 
Church.  It  is  pretty  certain  that  his  fa- 
ther and  mother  were  Catholics.  But 
this  was  an  age  in  England  of  the  disin' 
tegration  of  the  ancient  faith.  No  doubt 
Shakespeare  had  a  warm  place  in  his 
heart  for  the  Church  of  his  fathers.  In 
no  instance  does  he  ridicule  her  tenets  in 
his  masterly  dramas.  However,  from  this 
fact  we  cannot  conclude  that  Shakespeare 
was  a  Catholic.  Great  art  demands  Cath- 
olic truth,  and  Shakespeare  would  not  be 
the  great  dramatist  that  he  is   had  he 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


159 


stooped  to  the  ridiculing  of  the  tenets  of 
the  Catholic  Church  in  his  dramatic  crea- 
tions. This  fidelity  to  fact  and  truth  of 
life,  this  sympathy  with  the  spiritual  ten- 
ets of  the  soul,  marks  the  work  of  the  su- 
preme artist  in  every  age. 

We  know  full  well  that  there  are  many 
scholars  and  writers  who  hold  that  Shake- 
speare was  a  Catholic.    I  must  say  that  I 
cannot  accept  this  judgment  or  conclus- 
ion.   Shakespeare  lived  at  a  time  when  to 
my  mind  religion  touched  very  lightly  the 
souls  of  the  English  people.    Many  of  the 
dramatists  of  the  tin.c  were  profligates, 
and  profligacy  and  the  practices  of  the 
Catholic  faith  do  not  go  very  well  to- 
gether.   Men  of  genius,  unfortunately, 
a  re  often  not  very  religious.   They  realize 
better  far  than  ordinary  mortals  what  a 
part  the  spiritual  plays  in  the  growth  of 
the  soul  and  in  the  profession  and  growth 
of  character,  but  often  in  proportion  as 
God  has  dowered  them  with  vision  be- 
yond men,  they  are  dragged  down  by  the 


i6o    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


'i' 


tyranny  of  the  flesh.  But  if  Shakespeare 
was  not  a  Catholic,  he  certainly  in  his 
plays,  as  Carlyle  says,  voices  the  Catholic- 
ity of  the  Middle  Ages.  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, by  Act  of  Parliament,  destroyed  the 
ancient  Church  in  England,  but  her  de- 
cree could  not  touch  the  Catholic  life  of 
England  in  the  past,  for  the  Catholic 
Church  is  the  most  immortal  of  things, 
and  her  life  and  the  fruit  of  her  life  in  art 
live  on  forever.  It  was  this  Catholic  life 
that  inspired  Shakespeare  and  in  many 
instances  gave  him  plot  and  story. 

If  we  appeal  to  Shakespeare  for  inter- 
nal evidence  to  prove  that  he  was  a  Cath- 
olic, we  but  weaken  and  make  ridiculous 
our  position,  for  every  dramatist  must  be 
true  not  only  to  the  setting  of  his  drama, 
but  to  the  psychology  of  his  characters. 
It  is  no  proof,  then,  to  cite  the  case  of 
Hamlet's  father  coming  from  purgatory 
to  tell  his  son  of  his  "murder  most  foul" 
that  Shakespeare  believed  in  purgatory. 
The  tragedy  of  Hamlet  belongs  to  a  time 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     i6i 

in  Denmark  when  all  its  people  professed 
the  Catholic  faith,  and,  besides  the  need 
of  bringing  Hamlet's  father  from  purga- 
tory for  dramatic  purposes,  Shakespeare 
was  compelled  by  the  very  setting  of  his 
drama  to  touch  its  life  in  the  unfolding 
with  the  chrism  of  the  ancient  faith. 

Let  us  suppose  that  three  centuries 
hence  a  discussion  arose  as  to  the  religion 
of  the  poet  Longfellow.    We  can  imagine 
some  one  citing  passages  in  his  touching 
idyll  of  "Evangeline"-the  one,  for  in 
stance,  describing  the  heroine's  beautiful 
countenance, "whenafter  confession  home- 
ward serenely  she  walked  with  God's  ben- 
ediction upon  her,"  or  that  beautiful  and 
sympathetic  picture  of  Father  Felician 
the  village  priest,  whom  all  the  children 
greeted  as  he  passed  down  the  street,  and 
who  with  uplifted  hand  reverently  blessed 
them.    Surely,  too,  these  passages,  so  full 
of  Catholic  life  and  color,  might  be  well 
cited  to  prove  that  Longfellow  was  a 
(.atholic.    They  are  certainly  as  convinc- 


i 


1 62    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


ing  as  the  Ghost  in  "Hamlet."  But  the 
truth  is  that  neither  affords  any  evidence 
of  the  religion  of  Shakespeare  or  Long- 
fellow. 

When  we  pass  from  Shakespeare  to 
John  Milton,  we  pass  to  a  poet  not  only 
entirely  devoid  of  Catholic  sympathy,  but 
a  poet  whose  rigid  Puritanism  deprived 
his  epic  art  of  those  Catholic  symbols  and 
Catholic  legends  and  Catholic  traditions 
which  give  color  and  life  and  artistry  to 
the  highest  dreams  of  the  soul.  Milton's 
great  epic,  "Paradise  Lost,"  is  but  a  torso. 
It  lacks  artistic  unity.  It  is  only  great  in 
passages  or  patches.  Unlike  to  the  "Di- 
vine Comedy,"  which  has  all  the  artistic 
unity  of  Catholic  truth,  this  splendid 
English  epic,  though  rioting  in  imagery 
and  the  supernatural,  lacks  this  artistic 
unity,  and,  lacking  this,  falls  below  as  a 
work  of  art  the  supreme  achievement  of 
the  great  Florentine  poet. 

Passing  from  Milton  to  Alexander 
Pope,  the   culmination  of   the   Correct 


!    i. 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     163 

School  of  Poetry,  we  are  face  to  face  with 
a  truth  well  worth  observing.  It  is  this  : 
A  poet  may  lire  a  Catholic  and  die  a 
Catholic,  and  yet  put  nothing  of  his  faith 
into  his  work.  Pope  is  certainly  a  case 
in  pointy  Pope  professed  and  practiced 
the  Catholic  religion,  and  yet  you  will 
look  in  vain  for  any  evidence  of  it  in  his 

T.17".  ^"^  '"'"•'^  *°  b*=  ""der  the  spell 
of  the  false  philosophy  of  Lord  Boling- 

whh  th;«"  '''''*  ^°""  •'""^  '^'"'^'*=^ 

Now  William  Wordsworth,  the  head 
of  the  School  of  Nature  and  Romance,  is 
a  case  in  point  where  a  poet  may  not  pro- 
fess the  Catholic  faith  and  yet  teach 
Catholic  truths-nay,  give  evidence  in  his 
work  that  the  beautiful  truths,  teachings 
and  dogmas  of  the  Catholic  Church  may 
mipire  at  times  the  soul  of  the  poet  no 
matter  at  what  altar  he  kneels. 

I  remember  that  when  I  visited  the 
Wordsworth  Land  in  the  summer  of  190, 
I  was  fortunate  enough  to  meet  a  vener- 


164    Essays  on  Catholic  Life. 


able  octogenarian  who  had  been  an  inti- 
mate friend  of  the  Wordsworth  family. 
In  our  conversation  touching  Wordsworth 
I  elicited  from  him  the  fact  that,  while 
the  poet  was  an  Anglican,  there  was  not 
anything  of  the  Ritualist  in  him.  He  was 
rather  what  might  be  termed  a  Broad 
Churchman  today.  In  view  of  this, 
Wordsworth's  beautiful  sonnet  on  the 
Blessed  Virgin,  where  he  pays  tribute  and 
homage  to  the  Mother  of  God  as  "Our 
tainted  nature's  solitary  boast,"  is,  indeed, 
remarkable.  Despite  the  fact  of  Words- 
worth's anti-Catholic  prejudice,  which  is 
revealed  in  some  of  his  ecclesiastical  son- 
nets, this  High  Priest  and  Viceregent  of 
Nature  pays  homage  to  the  Mother  of 
God  in  lines  that  might  have  been  penned 
by  a  Cardinal  Newman  or  a  Father 
Faber. 

When  we  turn  to  the  poets  of  our  own 
time — to  the  poets  at  whose  graves  we 
seemed  to  stand,  as  it  were,  but  yesterday: 
Dante,  Gabriel  Rosetti,  Robert  Browning 


Essays  on  Catholic  Life.     165 

and  Alfred  Tennyson— we  seewhat  a  large 
part  Catholic  truth  has  played  in  their 
best  work.  It  was  Rosetti  that  restored  to 
English  poetry  the  mediaval  temper  of 
wonder,  and  this  is  peculiarly  a  charac- 
teristic of  the  Ages  of  Faith.  In  reading 
Rosetti's  poetry  you  feel  something  of  the 
mystery  that  lurks  in  the  dim  aisles  of  a 
Gothic  Cathedral. 

Browning  was  of  Nonconformist  ori- 
gin, and  in  many  a  poem  does  grievous 
wrong  to  the  Catholic  Church,  yet  his 
most  considerable    poem,  that    massive 
epic,  "The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  which  is 
essentially  Catholic  in  theme,  if  not  whol- 
ly so  in  treatment,  bears  witness  to  the 
fact  that  the  great  monologuist  was  at  his 
best  when  he  was  most  sincere  and  faith- 
ful in  his  portrayal  of  Catholic  character. 
Tennyson  went  to  a  Catholic  subject  to 
build  up  what  he  regarded  as  his  best  and 
noblest  poem,  "The  Idylls  of  the  King." 
No  need  to  say  that  this  is  essentially 
Catholic.     It  has  its  setting  in  Catholic 


i66    Essays  on  Cathouc  Life. 

times,  and  you  will  do  well  not  to  read 
i:  through  the  glasses  of  twentieth-century 
doubt  and  skepticism.  Even  Tennyson's 
splendid  elegy,  "In  Memoriam,"  though 
regarded  by  many  as  a  poem  of  doubt, 
beats  and  pulses  in  many  a  passage  to  the 
divine  music  of  Catholic  truth.  When 
the  sorrow  in  it  sinks  or  passes  from  the 
sensuous  to  the  sanctified,  we  feel  the  truth 
of  Dante's  words,  "In  sua  volonia  e  nos- 
tra pace."  Surely,  indeed,  the  Catholic 
element  in  English  poetry  is  very  consid- 
erable. 


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